Thermal Photons Research Articles

Hard X-ray emission from a Compton scattering corona in large black hole mass tidal disruption events

ABSTRACT We extend the relativistic time-dependent thin-disc TDE model to describe non-thermal (2−10 keV) X-ray emission produced by the Compton up-scattering of thermal disc photons by a compact electron corona, developing analytical and numerical models of the evolving non-thermal X-ray light curves. In the simplest cases, these X-ray light curves follow power-law profiles in time. We suggest that TDE discs act in many respects as scaled-up versions of XRB discs, and that such discs should undergo state transitions into harder accretion states. XRB state transitions typically occur when the disc luminosity becomes roughly one per cent of its Eddington value. We show that if the same is true for TDE discs then this, in turn, implies that TDEs with non-thermal X-ray spectra should come preferentially from large-mass black holes. The characteristic hard-state transition mass is MHS ≃ 2 × 107M⊙. Hence, subpopulations of thermal and non-thermal X-ray TDEs should come from systematically different black hole masses. We demonstrate that the known populations of thermal and non-thermal X-ray TDEs do indeed come from different distributions of black hole masses. The null-hypothesis of identical black hole mass distributions is rejected by a two-sample Anderson-Darling test with a p-value <0.01. Finally, we present a model for the X-ray rebrightening of TDEs at late times as they transition into the hard state. These models of evolving TDE light curves are the first to join both thermal and non-thermal X-ray components in a unified scenario.

Near field versus far field in radiative heat transfer between two-dimensional metals

Using the standard fluctuational electrodynamics framework, we analytically calculate the radiative heat current between two thin metallic layers, separated by a vacuum gap. We analyse different contributions to the heat current (travelling or evanescent waves, transverse electric or magnetic polarization) and reveal the crucial qualitative role played by the dc conductivity of the metals as compared to the speed of light. For poorly conducting metals, the heat current may be dominated by evanescent waves even when the separation between the layers greatly exceeds the thermal photon wavelength, and the coupling is of electrostatic nature. For well-conducting metals, the evanescent contribution dominates at separations smaller than the thermal wavelength and is mainly due to magnetostatic coupling, in agreement with earlier works on bulk metals.

What determines the unique spectra of super-Eddington accretors? Origin of optically thick and low-temperature coronae in super-Eddington accretion flows

Abstract The existence of relatively cool (kBT ≲ 10 keV) and optically thick (τ ≳ 3) coronae are inferred above super-Eddington accretion flow such as ultraluminous X-ray sources, GRS 1915+105, and narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies, which contrasts with cases in sub-Eddington accretion flows, which are associated with coronae with kBT ∼ 100 keV and τ ∼ 1. To understand their physical origin, we investigate the emission properties of the corona which is formed by the gas blown off the super-Eddington inner disk by radiation pressure. We assume that the corona is heated by the reconnection of magnetic loops emerging from the underlying disk. We show that this radiation-pressure-driven wind can act as an optically thick corona which upscatters thermal soft photons from the underlying disk, and that with a reasonable parameter set we can theoretically reproduce the coronal optical depth and temperature which are inferred by spectral fittings of observational data. By contrast, the coronal optical depth cannot be so high in sub-Eddington cases, since the coronal material is supplied from the disk via evaporation and there is a maximum limit on the evaporation rate. We suggest that low-temperature, optically thick Comptonization should be a key signature of super-Eddington accretion flow.

Temporal evolution of prompt GRB polarization

ABSTRACT The dominant radiation mechanism that produces the prompt emission in gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) remains a major open question. Spectral information alone has proven insufficient in elucidating its nature. Time-resolved linear polarization has the potential to distinguish between popular emission mechanisms, e.g. synchrotron radiation from electrons with a power-law energy distribution or inverse Compton scattering of soft seed thermal photons, which can yield the typical GRB spectrum but produce different levels of polarization. Furthermore, it can be used to learn about the outflow’s composition (i.e. whether it is kinetic-energy-dominated or Poynting-flux-dominated) and angular structure. For synchrotron emission, it is a powerful probe of the magnetic field geometry. Here, we consider synchrotron emission from a thin ultrarelativistic outflow, with bulk Lorentz factor Γ(R) = Γ0(R/R0)−m/2 ≫ 1, that radiates a Band-function spectrum in a single (multiple) pulse(s) over a range of radii, R0 ≤ R ≤ R0 + ΔR. Pulse profiles and polarization evolution at a given energy are presented for a coasting (m = 0) and accelerating (m = −2/3) thin spherical shell and for different viewing angles for a top-hat jet with sharp as well as smooth edges in emissivity. Four different magnetic field configurations are considered, such as a locally ordered field coherent over angular scales θB ≳ 1/Γ, a tangled field (B⊥) in the plane transverse to the radial direction, an ordered field (B∥) aligned in the radial direction, and a globally ordered toroidal field (Btor). All field configurations produce distinct polarization evolution with single (for B⊥ and B∥) and double (for Btor) 90○ changes in the polarization position angle.

Generation of Bright and Entangled Light from a Nondegenerate Three-Level Laser with Parametric Amplifier and Coupled to Thermal Reservoir

The detailed analysis of the two-mode quadrature squeezing and statistical properties of light generated by a nondegenerate three-level laser which has a parametric amplifier and coupled with a thermal reservoir is executed. The combination of the master equation and the stochastic differential equation is presented to study the nonclassical features of the light generated by the quantum system. Moreover, with the aid the resulting solutions together with the correlation properties of noise operators, we calculated the quadrature squeezing, entanglement, and mean number of photon pairs of the cavity light. It is found that the external small-amplitude driving radiation induces a strong correlation between the top and bottom states of three-level atoms to produce a high degree of squeezing. Moreover, the presence of a parametric amplifier is found to enhance the degree of squeezing of the cavity light. We have also established that an increase in the mean thermal photon number appears to degrade the squeezing, but enhances the mean number of photon pairs of the cavity light.

Thermal photons as a sensitive probe of $$\alpha $$-cluster in C + Au collisions at the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider

Different orientations of $\alpha$-clustered carbon nuclei colliding with heavy ions can result in a large variation in the value of anisotropic flow. Thus, photon flow observables from clustered ${\rm^{12}C}$ and ${\rm^{197}Au}$ collisions could be a potential probe to study the `direct photon puzzle'. We calculate the transverse momentum spectra and anisotropic flow coefficients ($v_n$) of thermal photons from collisions of triangular $\alpha$-clustered carbon and gold at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}=200$ GeV at RHIC using a hydrodynamic model framework and compare the results with those obtained from unclustered carbon and gold collisions. The slope of the thermal photon spectra is found to vary moderately for different orientations of collisions. However, we find that the elliptic ($v_2$) and triangular flow ($v_3$) coefficients of direct photons for specific configurations are significantly larger and predominantly formed by the QGP radiation. A strong anti-correlation between initial spatial ellipticity and triangularity is observed in an event-by-event framework of $\alpha$-clustered ${\rm C+Au}$ collisions. These special features provide us an opportunity to detect the exotic nature of cluster structure inside carbon nucleus using the photon probe in the future experiments.

Generalization of the Einstein coefficients and rate equations under the quantum Rabi oscillation

We have generalized Einstein coefficients and rate equations from quantum field theoretic point of view by bringing the fundamental processes and the quantum Rabi oscillation in a single footing for the light–matter interactions for nonzero Rabi frequency. We have analytically obtained multimode Jaynes–Cummings model results for the quantum Rabi oscillation of a two-level system in a lossy resonant cavity containing (i) thermal photons and (ii) injected photons of a coherent field. We have renormalized the coupling constant for the light–matter interactions for these cases. Our results match well with the seminal experimental data obtained in this regard by Brune et al (1996 Phys. Rev. Lett. 76 1800). We also have studied the population dynamics in this regard by applying the generalized Einstein rate equations.

Graphene Plasmon Excitation with Ground-State Two-Level Quantum Emitters.

The transmission of a two-level quantum emitter in its ground state through a graphene nanosheet is investigated. The graphene plasmons (GPs) field distribution, especially the opposite orientations of the vertical electric field components on the two sides of the graphene nanosheet, produces a significant nonadiabatic process during the interaction between the emitter and the localized GPs. By taking into account the counterrotating terms, the excitation of the quantum emitter with simultaneous emission of a GP has a large probability. This happens for emitter speeds of about 10^{-4} times the speed of light. For accelerated emitters, the GPs exhibit thermal field photon distribution with a high temperature. As a consequence, this study provides a promising platform to observe the dynamical Casimir effect as well as a simulation of the Unruh effect.

Reconstruction of Photon Conversions in the MPD Experiment

Spectra of thermal photons carry important information on the temperature of the hot and dense medium produced in heavy ion collisions. Photons can be measured via their conversion into electron-positron pairs in the detector material. In this contribution, challenges in the photon reconstruction are discussed and feasibility studies on photon conversion measurements in the future multipurpose detector (MPD) experiment at NICA are presented. The obtained results indicate good prospects for thermal photon measurements.

Continuous-variable entanglement in a two-mode lossy cavity: An analytic solution

Continuous-variable (CV) entanglement is a valuable resource in the field of quantum information. One source of CV entanglement is the correlations between the position and momentum of photons in a two-mode squeezed state of light. In this paper, we theoretically study the generation of squeezed states, via spontaneous parametric downconversion (SPDC), inside a two-mode lossy cavity that is pumped with a classical optical pulse. The dynamics of the density operator in the cavity is modelled using the Lindblad master equation, and we show that the exact solution to this model is the density operator for a two-mode squeezed thermal state, with a time-dependent squeezing amplitude and average thermal photon number for each mode. We derive an expression for the maximum entanglement inside the cavity that depends crucially on the difference in the losses between the two modes. We apply our exact solution to the important example of a microring resonator that is pumped with a Gaussian pulse. The expressions that we derive will help researchers optimize CV entanglement in lossy cavities.

Twist-induced control of near-field heat radiation between magnetic Weyl semimetals

Due to the large anomalous Hall effect, magnetic Weyl semimetals can support nonreciprocal surface plasmon polariton modes in the absence of an external magnetic field. This implies that magnetic Weyl semimetals can find novel application in (thermal) photonics. In this work, we consider the near-field radiative heat transfer between two magnetic Weyl semimetal slabs and show that the heat transfer can be controlled with a relative rotation of the parallel slabs. Thanks to the intrinsic nonreciprocity of the surface modes, this so-called twisting method does not require surface structuring like periodic gratings. The twist-induced control of heat transfer is due to the mismatch of the surface modes from the two slabs with a relative rotation.

Experimental Certification of Nonclassicality via Phase-Space Inequalities.

In spite of its fundamental importance in quantum science and technology, the experimental certification of nonclassicality is still a challenging task, especially in realistic scenarios where losses and noise imbue the system. Here, we present the first experimental implementation of the recently introduced phase-space inequalities for nonclassicality certification, which conceptually unite phase-space representations with correlation conditions. We demonstrate the practicality and sensitivity of this approach by studying nonclassicality of a family of noisy and lossy quantum states of light. To this end, we experimentally generate single-photon-added thermal states with various thermal mean photon numbers and detect them at different loss levels. Based on the reconstructed Wigner and Husimi Q functions, the inequality conditions detect nonclassicality despite the fact that the involved distributions are nonnegative, which includes cases of high losses (93%) and cases where other established methods do not reveal nonclassicality. We show the advantages of the implemented approach and discuss possible extensions that assure a wide applicability for quantum science and technologies.

Sustainable building technology: thermal control of solar energy to cool and heat the building naturally

A sustainable building design technology is being proposed to heat and cool inside the building naturally by using exterior curtain wall to control the solar energy. Simply, the thermal state of photon is being controlled by inducing Bose–Einstein (B–E) discrete photon mechanics and Higgs bosons (H → γγ¯) electro-quantum charge application to cool and heat the building naturally by its exterior curtain wall. Thus, in this research to cool the building naturally, helium (He)-aided curtain wall is being utilized to capture the solar energy to cool the photons by employing Bose–Einstein (B–E) photonic band gap in order to form a cooling-state photon. Here, this cooling-state photon is named as the Hossain Cooling Photon (HcP¯) which is actively functioned to cool the building by the process of photonic thermodynamics. When needed this HcP¯ can be reformed into a heating-state photon here denoted as Hossain Thermal Photon (HtP¯), which is created by Higgs bosons (H → γγ¯) electro-magnetic quantum empowered by a single-diode semiconductor to heat the building naturally. It is because of the Higgs bosons (H → γγ¯) quantum which is being instigated through the extreme low-range weak force which regulates the HcP¯ quantum to get agitated in order to convert it into heating state photon of HtP¯. The formation of HcP¯ and the reformation of HtP¯ have been confirmed by the use of set of computational mathematics. Interestingly the results revealed that the feasibility of reformation of photons (HcP¯ and HtP¯) is positively doable into the exterior curtain wall to cool and heat the building naturally which indeed world be an innovative technology for sustainable building science to mitigate global energy and environmental vulnerability.

Production of axionlike particles from photon conversions in large-scale solar magnetic fields

The Sun is a well-studied astrophysical source of axion-like particles (ALPs), produced mainly through the Primakoff process. Moreover, in the Sun there exist large-scale magnetic fields that catalyze an additional ALP production via a coherent conversion of thermal photons. We study this contribution to the solar ALP emissivity, typically neglected in previous investigations. Furthermore, we discuss additional bounds on the ALP-photon coupling from energy-loss arguments, and the detection perspectives of this new ALP flux at future helioscope and dark matter experiments.

Primary Thermometry of Propagating Microwaves in the Quantum Regime

The ability to control and measure the temperature of propagating microwave modes down to very low temperatures is indispensable for quantum information processing, and may open opportunities for studies of heat transport at the nanoscale, also in the quantum regime. Here we propose and experimentally demonstrate primary thermometry of propagating microwaves using a transmon-type superconducting circuit. Our device operates continuously, with a sensitivity down to $4\times 10^{-4}$ photons/$\sqrt{\mbox{Hz}}$ and a bandwidth of 40 MHz. We measure the thermal occupation of the modes of a highly attenuated coaxial cable in a range of 0.001 to 0.4 thermal photons, corresponding to a temperature range from 35 mK to 210 mK at a frequency around 5 GHz. To increase the radiation temperature in a controlled fashion, we either inject calibrated, wideband digital noise, or heat the device and its environment. This thermometry scheme can find applications in benchmarking and characterization of cryogenic microwave setups, temperature measurements in hybrid quantum systems, and quantum thermodynamics.

Observation of second-order interference beyond the coherence time with true thermal photons.

It has recently been shown that counter-intuitive Franson-like second-order interference can be observed with a pair of classically correlated pseudo thermal light beams and two separate unbalanced interferometers (UIs): the second-order interference visibility remains fixed at 1/3 even though the path length difference in each UI is increased significantly beyond the coherence length of the pseudo thermal light [Phys. Rev. Lett.119, 223603 (2017)PRLTAO0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.119.223603]. However, as the pseudo thermal beam itself originated from a long-coherence laser (and by using a rotating ground disk), there exists the possibility of a classical theoretical model to account for second-order interference beyond the coherence time on the long coherence time of the original laser beam. In this work, we experimentally explore this counter-intuitive phenomenon with a true thermal photon source generated via quantum thermalization, i.e., obtaining a mixed state from a pure two-photon entangled state. This experiment not only demonstrates the unique second-order coherence properties of thermal light clearly but may also open up remote sensing applications based on such effects.

Highlights from the PHENIX Collaboration

PHENIX presented several new results at Quark Matter 2019 in 7 parallel talks and 7 posters. These proceedings highlight a sampling of the measurements presented during the conference. PHENIX results on flow in small systems, published in Nature Physics, indicate that the flow in small systems is driven by the initial state geometry. Additional measurements exploring QGP effects in small systems have also been explored. Two-particle correlations in d+Au and 3He+Au suggest potential modification compared to those in p+p collisions. PHENIX has also measured J/Ψ in the forward and backward rapidity regions in d+Au and 3He+Au collisions. Thermal photon measurements are also consistent with QGP formation in small systems. A new measurement of thermal photons using the Au+Au data set collected by PHENIX in 2014 verifies the scaling relationship previously observed for thermal photons. New results for a variety of hadron species with increasing precsion are now available and provide both insight into hadronization as well as crucial information for energy loss models that use RAA to tune their parameters. Jet modification is also studied via a new observable extracted from π0-hadron correlations in Au+Au collisions.

Thermal photon production in Au+Au collisions

PHENIX measurements of low pT direct photons in Au+Au collisions at 200 GeV simultaneously show large yields and large anisotropies with respect to the reaction plane. Calculations of thermal photon emission fall short in describing the yield and the anisotropy at the same time. Furthermore, a recent publication of the STAR collaboration indicates lower direct photon yields in Au+Au collisions than observed by PHENIX. In order to provide new insights, PHENIX has presented new direct photon results from Au+Au data taken in 2014, which adds a fourth independent measurement to the previously published PHENIX results. The dataset provides a 10-fold increase in statistics for the measurement of direct photon yields and their anisotropy.

A Non-Equilibrium Approach to Photon Emission from the Late Stages of Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions

Cross sections for photon production in hadronic scattering processes have been calculated according to an effective chiral field theory. For π + ρ → π + γ and π + π → ρ + γ processes, these cross sections have been implemented into a novel hadronic transport approach (SMASH), which is suitable for collisions at low and intermediate energies. The implementation is verified by systematically comparing the thermal photon rate to theoretical expectations. The photon rates we obtain are compared to previous works, where scattering processes mediated by ω mesons are found to contribute significantly to the total photon production. Finally, the impact of considering the finite width of the ρ meson is investigated, and a significant enhancement of photon production in the low-energy region is observed. This work is the first step towards a consistent treatment of photon emission in hybrid hydrodynamics+transport approaches. The quantification of the importance of the hadronic stage for the resolution of the direct photon flow puzzle is a next step and can be applied to identify equilibrium and non-equilibrium effects in the hadronic afterburner.

Feasibility of thermal photon measurements in heavy ion collisions at NICA energies

Thermal photons serve as valuable probes of the hot and dense medium produced in heavy ion collisions. The effective thermal photon temperature measured at RHIC and LHC energies far exceeds the temperature predicted for the phase space transition into the deconfined state of quarks and gluons, known as quark-gluon plasma (QGP). Direct photon measurements in heavy ion collisions at the future NICA collider may help to estimate the effective temperature of the produced medium at lower energies and trace the transition from QGP to the hadron gas state. In this contribution, we present feasibility studies on the thermal photon measurements in AuAu collisions using the photon conversion method in the MPD experiment at NICA.