No image for this color! There is an exception: stimulated emission, which is the key to building a laser. If the material absorbs some frequencies, the material will appear to be colored a photon that is absorbed (depending on the energy level structure) can be re-emitted, but this will be at (a) a random time later, and (b) in a random direction. In a typical glass the phase front is slightly slowed while traveling through the glass this slowing is encoded in the index of refraction, $n = c/v$.
So what is required for a transparent medium to successfully transmit an image? Since light is a physical wave, the transparent medium must preserve the coherence of the phase information of the light. With enough distortion the image is completely lost. That is, what started out at the beginning has not arrived all at the same time. Transparent materials (glass, air) transmit images if the image is distorted or indistinct, we know that the material is altering the coherence of the optical information. They will barely see the electron clouds, but instead scatter of the nucleus.įor those curious as to why light slows down in the ice, I've repeated my previous answer to this question:
Because the ones which generate Cerenkov radiation are traveling at relativistic speeds, this reduces the effective cross section for scattering. The muons which are traveling faster than 3/4 c are the ones which create the Cerenkov radiation the slower ones will just create ion trails, and not the optical shock waves.Īll of the muons interact with charged particles, leading to your question of why they travel faster than light in ice, leading to Cerenkov radiation.
The muons are created inside the ice when a high energy neutrino is absorbed. The net effect is that light travels at c/n in the ice for ice n=1.3, so for light in ice it travels about 3/4 c. Of course, the Cerenkov radiation is in the optical range, and so is slowed by the ice by the refractive index. As the energy of the photon increases, the interactions with the electrons decrease, so that x-rays are barely retarded at all, though they are scattered by the electrons of the atoms.
#PARTICLE FASTER THAN LIGHT FREE#
The index of refraction is an electronic property, directly dependent upon the electric permittivity of the media, and ultimately depends upon the free electron density. The compression cause the ambient moisture to condense into a visible fog. It's been analogized to the visible shockwave created by aircraft breaking the sound barrier in humid air. Muons have mass, a lot of it by atomic particle standards, and they always move at near the speed of light in a vacuum, regardless of the medium they form in or transit.Ĭherenkov radiation can be thought of as a kind of shockwave generated as the muon or other particle compresses the ambient electrical and magnetic fields in a medium until they form photons. Since photons have no mass, they are easily influenced and retarded by ambient electrical and magnetic fields in ordinary matter. Light/photons moving though any medium except vacuum interacts with the electrical and magnetic fields of the medium as well as being absorbed and then reemitted. Which will travel farther through the impeding stalks? You target a stand of cane or reeds with both balls.
#PARTICLE FASTER THAN LIGHT FULL#
Image having two ping pong balls, one full of air with just the mass of the plastic shell, the second filled with lead. With a huge mass moving at relativistic speeds, they shrug of electrical charge or magnetic interactions that would stop an electron or photon. Muons are identical to electrons, including their charge and "size" but have 1,000 times the mass. So, a muon has tremendous momentum relative to photons or electrons. Also, muons decay so rapidly that if they are not moving at relativistic speeds, they don't last long enough to have much of an effect on anything. It's the muon's mass that decreases the effects of electrical interactions and lets them penetrate far into dense matter.
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