The Nature of Radiation

Stephen J. Gustafson, Israel Michael Sigal

Hardev Singh Virk

Duality (Dual Nature) is a universal character of our life in this Universe. There is an analogy of dual nature of radiation and matter in the domain of Indian Philosophy and Sikh religion, where Ultimate Reality is revealed to exist in its dual nature as sarguna and nirguna Brahman. The concept of Dual Nature of radiation has been in existence since the historical times but it was Max Planck who introduced it on firm footing to explain black body radiation spectrum. Louis de Broglie proposed the concept of dual nature of matter in 1924 in his doctoral thesis. It was established during investigations of Photoelectric effect and Compton effect. The real break-through in interpreting dual nature of matter and radiation may be ascribed to the advent of Quantum Mechanics. It was observed that in the microscopic world of particles, classical concepts of wave and particle fail to justify the experimental investigations; hence there is a need to invoke quantum concepts.

Stephen J. Gustafson, Israel Michael Sigal

Виталий Л. Гинзбург

The nature of spontaneous radiation is discussed in its technical and historical aspects. The point of view encountered in the literature according to which spontaneous radiation is induced radiation produced by the zero-point (vacuum) oscillations of the electromagnetic field is criticized. Spontaneous radiation is not a purely quantum effect since it occurs also in the classical region (and in this case it is described by classical electrodynamics).

Joseph W. Fowler, I. M. Fogarty Florang, Nathan Nakamura +3 more

Naturally occurring radiation backgrounds cause correlated decoherence events in superconducting qubits. These backgrounds include both gamma rays produced by terrestrial radioisotopes and cosmic rays. We use the particle-transport code Geant4 and the PARMA summary of the cosmic-ray spectrum to model both sources of natural radiation and to study their effects in the typical substrates used in superconducting electronics. We focus especially on three rates that summarize radiation's effect on substrates. We give analytic expressions for these rates, and how they depend upon parameters including laboratory elevation, substrate material, ceiling thickness, and wafer area and thickness. The modeled rates and the distribution of event energies are consistent with our earlier measurement of radiation backgrounds using a silicon thermal kinetic-inductance detector.