Photon Containment Materials

[epicdragonflare]

Hello Scienceforum.net users, I have multiple (somewhat ludicrous) ideas for a "photon cannon" type of idea. The theory is that a large piece of artillery could store up a super dense "energy ball" of photons via a large array of hypersensitive solar panels and would then be placed in a silicon-lead alloy projectile that would fire from the artillery and cause a mass area of high radiation along with the possibility of a large electromagnetic pulse. (This is in theory though. I'm not planning on becoming the next Robert Oppenheimer) My question is though, how would I be able to store and condense a mass amount of photons for a prolonged period of time?

 

(note that if my ideas are a bit off, I am only 14 years old, not a genius in the field of quantum theory)

[swansont]

Short answer is you can't. You could possibly store up a lot of energy and convert that into photons when you needed them.

 

The reason you can't store the photons is because the only way to do this is with mirrors. The issues here are that mirrors aren't perfect and light travels very, very fast (3x10⁸ m/s). So the light would bounce many, many times in a short amount of time, and in doing so would get absorbed by one of the mirrors. If two mirrors are 1/3 m apart, it only takes nanosecond to travel between them. This means there will be a billion reflections per second. Even if the mirrors are 99.9999% reflective, one photon will be lost in an average of a million reflections. You'd lose a noticeable fraction of the energy in just a millisecond or two.

[epicdragonflare]

Well you've made it quite clear my idea is a tad bit illogical, ((which I will attempt to disprove you on, but this will be at a later date) how about this then : What if it could be sized down to a small contraption (possibly strapped to one's back, and similar to an m2 flamethrower) in the sense that photons will quickly be gathered by the back mounted solar arrays and then fired out of a sort of pulse shotgun to blind or stun people? (could be used by riot control, police, (etc.) as it would be much more effective and harmless then pepper spray and boiling water ) Forgive me for my persistence but I don't enjoy "giving up a fight", if you know what I mean.

Edited October 18, 2013 by epicdragonflare

[swansont]

We have devices like that, sort of. Flash lamps. (Or lasers, or even flashlights)

[Endy0816]

Yeah, easier to just store electricity and then emit the light on demand.

 

Plasma based weapons could be another option to explore.

[Enthalpy]

Fun: I had the same desire as a teen (though not for weapons).

 

The material with lowest loss (unless some miracle happened unnoticed) is silica used for fiber optics. Significant attenuation occurs over some 100km, so at 2*10⁸m/s propagation speed, it stores light for 0.5ms.

 

Smaller loss is possible in vacuum, provided light stays bundled, vacuum is maintained by a tube over the whole path, and excellent dichroic mirrors reflect it at the ends. This is done a gravitational waves detectors:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_wave_detector

Ligo lets light bounce 75 times in the 4km long arms, but how much light is lost is unclear:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIGO

simplistic signal-to-noise computations would tell "lose exp(1) is desireable" so this would mean the photon survived 1ms.

 

Then, you might put a mirror on the Moon, an other on Earth (let's forget nasty technological limits), and 2*75 bounces would retard by 3 min. Though, it needs of course to suppress the atmosphere, and takes big mirrors: at 0.5µm wavelength, 100m diameter and perfect polish would let light diverge by 2m after one leg, almost good enough for 2*150 bounces.

[epicdragonflare]

Well I believe I have all the answers I need here, so I appreciate your help! (to all who responded)