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Superlight inverse Doppler effect

Nature Physics volume 14, pages 1001–1005 (2018)Cite this article

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Abstract

It has long been thought1 that the inverse Doppler frequency shift of light2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13 is impossible in homogeneous systems with a positive refractive index. Here we break this long-held tenet by predicting a previously unconsidered Doppler effect of light inside a radiation cone, the so-called Vavilov–Cherenkov cone, under specific circumstances. It has been known from the classic work of Ginzburg and Frank that a superlight (that is, superluminal) normal Doppler effect14,15,16,17,18 appears inside the Vavilov–Cherenkov cone if the velocity of the source v is larger than the phase velocity of light vp. By further developing their theory, we discover that an inverse Doppler frequency shift will arise if v > 2vp. We denote this as the superlight inverse Doppler effect. Moreover, we show that the superlight inverse Doppler effect can be spatially separated from the other Doppler effects by using highly squeezed polaritons (such as graphene plasmons), which may facilitate the experimental observation.

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Fig. 1: Representation in k space of the conventional Doppler effect, superlight normal Doppler effect and superlight inverse Doppler effect.
Fig. 2: Real-space schematic demonstration of various Doppler effects of light.
Fig. 3: Superlight inverse Doppler effect of graphene plasmons.
Fig. 4: Real-space representation of the superlight inverse Doppler effect spatially separated from other Doppler effects.

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Acknowledgements

This work was sponsored by the Singapore Ministry of Education (grant nos. MOE2015-T2-1-070, MOE2016-T3-1-006 and Tier 1 RG174/16 (S)), and the US Army Research Laboratory and the US Army Research Office through the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies (contract nos. W911NF-18-2-0048 and W911NF-13-D-0001). I.K. is an Azrieli Fellow, supported by the Azrieli Foundation, and was partially supported by the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Research Council (FP7-Marie Curie IOF) under grant no. 328853-MC-BSiCS.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Xihang Shi, Xiao Lin.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Physics and Applied Physics, School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore

    Xihang Shi, Xiao Lin, Fei Gao, Zhaoju Yang & Baile Zhang

  2. Department of Electrical Engineering, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel

    Ido Kaminer & Zhaoju Yang

  3. College of Information Science and Electronic Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

    Fei Gao

  4. Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    John D. Joannopoulos & Marin Soljačić

  5. Centre for Disruptive Photonic Technologies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore

    Baile Zhang

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  1. Xihang Shi
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Contributions

All authors contributed extensively to the work presented in this paper. X.L., X.S. and B.Z. conceived the research. X.S. and X.L. performed the calculation. I.K., J.D.J., M.S, F.G., Z.Y. and B.Z. contributed insight and discussion on the results. X.L., X.S., B.Z., I.K., J.D.J. and M.S wrote the paper. B.Z., I.K., J.D.J. and M.S. supervised the project.

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Correspondence to Xiao Lin, Ido Kaminer or Baile Zhang.

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Four chapters, two figures, 11 references

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Shi, X., Lin, X., Kaminer, I. et al. Superlight inverse Doppler effect. Nature Phys 14, 1001–1005 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-018-0209-6

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