Resonance generation of photons from vacuum in cavities due to strong periodical changes of conductivity in a thin semiconductor boundary layer

Abstract

We study a possibility of photon generation from vacuum in a cavity with an artificial effective time-dependent plasma mirror, which could be created by mean so fp eriodical short laser pulses, illuminating a thin semiconductor slab .W et ak ei nto account two important circumstances: a big imaginary part of the complex time-dependent dielectric permeability inside the slab and a strong dependence of this imaginary part on the distance from the surface of the slab. We find the conditions under which the usual unitary quantization schemes in time-dependent media with real dielectric permeability can be applied to the problem concerned with relatively small (a few per cent) error. We show that, by using a slab with thickness of the order of 1 mm, it is possible to generate a large number of microwave (GHz) photons (up to 10 8 or more) after several thousand picosecond pulses with repetition frequency of the order of 1 GHz, provided that semiconductor materials with high mobility of carriers, high photoabsorption efficiency and smal lr ecombination time (less than 1 ns) can be found. We discuss the possible advantages of modes with TM polarization over TE ones, as well as some other important problems to be solved.