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Infrared Remote Sensing and Instrumentation

Where lies the quantumness behind detecting electromagnetic waves for frequencies from infrared and up?

Chandrasekhar Roychoudhuri, Narasimha S. Prasad, Gayanath Fernando

Published Sep 30, 2022• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The synthesis of Newtonian concept of corpuscles during emission with Huygens’ concept of secondary-wavelets during propagation implies that all EM radiations from quantized atoms and molecules are released as discrete amount of energies. However, they propagate out as time-finite Maxwellian light pulses. Huygens also underscored that his secondary wavelets keep propagating as independent pulses in the absence of any interacting medium, or until intercepted by an interface with a medium or a detector. Then we use the Superposition Principle and the coherence theory to derive Einstein’s photoelectric equation by summing innumerable random time-finite pulses. This process driven approach should yield the characteristic statistical variations of photoelectron current pulses, as generated by photodetectors for different kinds of light sources. Lamb & Scully originally proposed this semiclassical approach without assuming that light actually consists of time finite pulses. The quantumness remains confined within the excitation and de-excitations processes in the material particles.

DOI
10.1117/12.2635066

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The synthesis of Newtonian concept of corpuscles during emission with Huygens’ concept of secondary-wavelets during propagation implies that all EM radiations from quantized atoms and molecules are released as discrete amount of energies. However, they propagate out as time-finite Maxwellian light pulses. Huygens also underscored that his secondary wavelets keep propagating as independent pulses in the absence of any interacting medium, or until intercepted by an interface with a medium or a detector. Then we use the Superposition Principle and the coherence theory to derive Einstein’s photoelectric equation by summing innumerable random time-finite pulses. This process driven approach should yield the characteristic statistical variations of photoelectron current pulses, as generated by photodetectors for different kinds of light sources. Lamb & Scully originally proposed this semiclassical approach without assuming that light actually consists of time finite pulses. The quantumness remains confined within the excitation and de-excitations processes in the material particles.
We are developing a semi-classical model to explain the physical processes behind the origin of the statistical variations in the photoelectron current pulses that we register for different kinds of light. They are: super-Poissonian thermal light, Poissonian laser light and sub-Poissonian nonlinearly generated light. Einstein’s photoelectron equation is an energy balancing equation. It does not incorporate the E-vector stimulation process before the quantum mechanically bound electrons can be released, which constitutes a key objective of physics. To introduce physics, we postulate that the photons are hybrid entities. They are discrete packets of energy hνmn at the moment of emission. Then they immediately evolve into spatially spreading diffractive wave packets to accommodate Huygens-Fresnel principle. HF principle has been behind the sustained progress in classical optics and photonics engineering. Thus a spatially spread out single wave-packet cannot any more deliver the necessary quantum cupful of energy hνmn to Angstrom-size detecting atoms. We need simultaneous stimulation of the same quantum entity by multiple wave packets. This model of physical interaction process naturally brings into play the significance of the degree of mutual coherence between different photon wave packets, along with their time varying amplitudes that are simultaneously stimulating the detecting quantum entities during any time-interval selected for the detection system. The superposition effects on the detector due to these phase and amplitude fluctuations are the physics-reasons behind the generation of different statistical variations in the photoelectron counts due to different kinds of sources even though the original photons are released randomly by all quantum sources.
Einstein’s 1905 paper on the photoelectric effect successfully modeled the published data while explicitly defining light as “indivisible light quanta”. One of the key successes of Quantum Mechanics (QM) of 1925-26, is the release of discrete packet of energy hv during any quantum level transitions in atoms and molecules. These two modern successes have overturned the mathematical and experimental knowledge developed over several centuries behind the optical science and engineering, without successfully bridging the knowledge gap epitomized by the still unresolved “wave-particle-duality” (WPD). Note that, optical science and engineering fields are still thriving using Huygens-Fresnel diffraction integral (HF-DI) of 1817 and Maxwell’s wave equations of 1876, without any controversy. This chapter resolves this dichotomy by eliminating the need for WPD. We provide a model for the atomic emission as a discrete packet of energy hv, as required by QM, but which evolves and propagates out as a Maxwellian classical exponential wave packet, while diffractively spreading out obeying the HF-DI. The continuing need to accept the magical WPD arises because we have not been systematically and explicitly exploring the two-step physical processes which take place during light-detector interaction before the photoelectric data is generated by our apparatus. The two steps are: (i) Linear amplitude-amplitude stimulation induced on the detecting dipoles by the light wave vector; (ii) which is then followed by the quadratic energy absorption step by the detector. If the detector is an LCR oscillator (for radio waves), or an old fashioned Bolometer (for higher frequencies), we would not observe any quantumness in the data. But, when we use a modern quantum photodetector using higher frequency EM waves, we can count highly amplified current pulses of electrons, generated out of each one of the released electron, bound quantum mechanically inside the detector.
A deeper understanding of the physical processes behind the emergence of photoelectron current pulse (PCP) statistics could help relaxing the source requirements for quantum computers, in choosing nonlinear vs. linear processing of light. Einstein’s photoelectric equation is an energy-balancing “bullet model”. The “bullet-model” over-rides both the classical and the quantum Superposition Principle (SP). SP requires first summing the joint amplitude stimulation experienced by the detecting dipoles by all the incident complex amplitudes, followed by the square modulus operation executed by the detecting dipoles to absorb the quantum-cupful of energy. We have been accommodating this “bullet model” via the prevailing belief that wave-particle duality is our new “confirmed knowledge”, instead of acknowledging our ignorance about the true nature of light. We will use the semiclassical model of photons as time-finite random light pulses stimulating a detecting molecule to its excited state of Ѱ. The molecule then absorbs the quantum of energy through the execution of the square modulus operation, Ѱ*Ѱ, and release the quantum mechanically bound electron. The lifetime of releasing the bound electron is very short as they are in quantum bands, rather than in sharp quantum levels. Each one of the released electron is then amplified, through complex electronic processes, by a factor of as much as 109, to generate one easily measurable photoelectric current pulse, or PCP’s. Therefore, the emergence of the PCP statistics is a combined function of (i) fluctuations in the incident light, (ii) fluctuations in the electron emission moments and (iii) noise introduced during the amplification process. In this paper, we will consider a classical linear approach in smoothing the average energy delivery on to a photodetector using the natural pulse replication property of a Fabry-Perot interferometer (FPI) and hence narrow the PCP statistical spread. If our model is correct, we should be able to derive the PCP-statistics for different sources using the fundamental amplitude and phase characteristics of various real sources. We have also proposed specific experiments to validate our model.
Our starting platform is the staggering and pervasive successes of the Huygens-Fresnel principle (HFP) from macro to nano photonics fields, which model the propagation as if each point on the wave front serves as a secondary point source. Summation of the complex amplitudes of these secondary wave fronts with proper inclination factor gives us remarkably accurate results for every possible realistic situation. Therefore, we take the concept of secondary point source of "energy" as a reality in all of cosmic space, irrespective of whether the space is "empty" or filled with "materials" as we understand them. It amounts to accepting the existence of an all pervading cosmic tension field (CTF). We justify our platform by comparing and contrasting with the various "material" based propagating waves that we can generate and experience, which always require the existence of uniform tension field energy at every point. Then we show that two of the key motivations behind Dirac's quantization of the EM field can easily be accommodated by semi-classical model a la Jaynes (quantized atoms and classical EM wave packet). They are: (i) Photo electric effects that require photon to be indivisible packets of energy; and (ii) QM transition rule requiring the emission of a unique frequency ν would violate "monochromaticity" rule implied by Fourier's time-frequency theorem and "coherence theory" if photons were to be time-finite classical wave packets.
As low light detection technologies are advancing, novel experiments like single molecule spectroscopy, quantum computation, quantum encryption are proliferating. Quantum mechanical detectors can produce only discrete "clicks" at different rates based on the propagating field energy through them, irrespective of whether the photons are divisible or indivisible packets of energy. This is because electrons are quantized elementary particles and they are always bound in quantized energy levels in different quantum systems. Highly successful quantum formalism is not capable of providing the microscopic picture of the processes undergoing during QM interactions; that is left to human imaginations allowing for sustained controversies and mis-interpretations. This paper underscores the paradoxes that arise with the assumption that photons are indivisible elementary particles based on the obvious but generally ignored fact that EM fields do not operate on (interfere with) each other. Then we propose that atomic or molecular emissions emerge and propagate out as space and time finite classical wave packets. We also suggest experiments to validate that the amplitude of a photon wave packet can be split and combined by classical optical components using the specific example of an N-slit grating.
Noninteraction of waves or the Non-Interaction of Waves property is common to all waves in the linear domain and in the absence of interacting materials. Autocorrelation between a pair of replicated fields to generate measurable changes implies some form of field–field interaction force, which has never been formally declared. Publications by Lamb, Jaynes, indicate that semiclassical theory is adequate to explain almost all the light–matter interaction phenomena. When one claims that he or she has registered a single photon “click,” what has really been measured in the instrument is a current pulse consisting of many billions of electrons through amplification of the light-induced emission of one or more starting electrons. Drawing a conclusion from current pulses that photons are indivisible quanta and each electron is released by a single indivisible light quantum does not demonstrate a one-to-one logical correlation.