Phys.org January 19, 2023
More than 80 years after quantum recoil was proposed researchers in Singapore have demonstrated the phenomenon of quantum recoil showing that it is observable at room temperature. By scattering free electrons off the periodic two-dimensional atomic sheets of van der Waals materials in a tabletop platform, they showed that the X-ray photon energy is accurately predicted only by quantum recoil theory, that it can be enormous, to the point that a classically predicted X-ray photon is emitted as an extremely low-energy photon. According to the researchers quantum recoil is a means of precision control over outgoing photon and electron spectra, and that quantum recoil can be tailored through a host of parameters: the electron energy, the atomic composition and the tilt angle of the van der Waals material. Their results pave the way to tabletop, room-temperature platforms for harnessing and investigating quantum electrodynamical effects in electron–photon interactions…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Quantum recoil and multimode X-ray generation in Smith–Purcell radiation. Credit: Nature Photonics (2023)Â