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We know that when we give alternating current across a wire then it will generate an electromagnetic wave which propagates outward.

But if we have a supply which can generate 610 to 670 terahertz of alternating current supply then does the wire generate blue light?

knzhou
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user210956
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    You could shine light (which is supply) on the wire, and the wire reflects this light (technically emmiting). This is not meant in jest, but pointing out you have to couple the signal into your antenna, and we know you cannot use wires for that. So you would have to coupöe probably optically. – lalala May 27 '19 at 19:15

6 Answers6

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It would be hard to generate such a current and harder still to get it to produce any blue light - though this is theoretically possible.

The main problem is that you are probably thinking of a metal wire. Metals absorb visible light, both reflecting it and turning it into lattice vibrations. This is because the wavelength of visible light is just a few thousand atoms long in size so it is in a "sweet spot" for exciting solid crystals. In fact, the tendency for solid objects to absorb, reflect and otherwise interact with visible light is why it is "visible".

In a normal radio wave, your metal wire will need to be on the order of a wavelength of the radio wave you want to produce. This is typically on the order of meters. Automobiles of the 20th century had metal wires sticking out of them, about 1 meter long, called "antennas", to catch such waves.

But for blue light the wavelength is only about 5 x $10^{-7}$ meters so any useful antenna would be very tiny because an "electron density wave" in your wire would be "turning around" before it got very far.

The electromagnetic spectrum is divided up not so much by "wavelength and frequency" as by the way that any given part of the spectrum interacts with matter. So, radio waves will interact via electron currents in long metal wires. But visible light interacts more with lattice vibrations and non-ionizing atomic transitions. So, "current in a wire" type emission works in frequency up to a thing called "the terahertz gap" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terahertz_gap . Above this frequency other emission techniques are usually required. Blue light is about three orders of magnitude higher in frequency than the terahertz gap.

Paul Young
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    For normal radio it is efficient to have a wire that's Lambda/2 but not necessary; "any old wire" will emit some radiation at RF. So it's not prima facie impossible that any old wire will glow faintly blue at the right frequency. – Peter - Reinstate Monica May 27 '19 at 05:40
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    @PeterA.Schneider I think your comment exactly hits the main point of this question that the other answers aren't really addressing. – KF Gauss May 27 '19 at 07:03
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    @PeterA.Schneider It's also not prima facie impossible that you might quantum tunnel to the opposite side of the Earth. In practice, it's effectively impossible. Electrons with sufficient energy to conduct a 600THz wave are immediately absorbed by conductive metals. We know of no means to generate a controlled electrical (ie: moving electrons) signal at that frequency either, so even if you had an idealized radiating nano-antenna we still would not be able to supply it a driving voltage. – J... May 27 '19 at 19:03
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    @PeterA.Schneider Fundamentally, the wire itself cannot co-exist with an electromagnetic signal in the 600THz range. By removing the electrons from the interfering atoms, you can start to think about moving electrons that quickly in systems like Free Electron Lasers, but in a bulk conductor this is simply not possible. – J... May 27 '19 at 19:08
  • "...so it is in a "sweet spot" for exciting solid crystals..." I think it is the electron density that causes metals to reflect light. An amorphous metal or even a liquid metal (mercury, gallium) would be just as reflective, and perfect crystals with high band gaps would be transparent (e.g. diamond, quartz...) and those with lower band gaps mostly absorbing (e.g. silicon, germanium, GaAs, etc.) with some dielectric Fresnel reflection. – uhoh May 28 '19 at 09:53
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    @uhoh - definitely liquid mercury reflects blue light and diamond is transparent ... however I am focused on the triumvirate of waves (radio, micro) vs. lights (IR,visible, UV), vs. rays (x and gamma) in the EM spectrum - it is only the "lights" which have the ideal wavelengths to do things like couple with phonons ... the OP is thinking about applying "waves" techniques to the "lights" - and I just want to make clear why they are different beasts - rays "see" individual atoms, waves "see" large conductive seas in metals, lights "see" molecules to macroscopic things – Paul Young May 28 '19 at 13:35
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    Okay, but really when it comes to most metals, we treat radio and visible light roughly the same. Anything below the plasma frequency is going to interact primarily with the electron plasma, and the physics and math used to describe the main part of the interaction is pretty similar in both cases, except in special situations like gold. – uhoh May 28 '19 at 13:39
  • Okay, but really when it comes to most metals, we treat radio and visible light roughly the same. Anything below the plasma frequency is going to interact primarily with the electron plasma, and the physics and math used to describe the main part of the interaction is pretty similar in both cases, there will be a reflected wave of nearly the same amplitude, a skin depth, etc. Except in some special situations like gold when atomic effects show up. – uhoh May 28 '19 at 13:46
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    @uhoh - I think that for $many$ applications the physics and math are the same, but for many other applications they aren't ... note also that $k$T stands pretty firmly between the two at STP (though I understand this is not your point) ... by the time you reach the wavelengths of light the size is small enough and the photon energy high enough that quantum effects start to matter in many cases – Paul Young May 28 '19 at 13:56
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    @PaulYoung this has got me thinking (always dangerous) so I have asked a somewhat related question: Are there any crystallographic effects we can see in the reflection of visible light from metal surfaces? – uhoh May 28 '19 at 14:09
  • sounds cool! for starters, I would mention Raman scattering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raman_scattering - but your question already upvoted and favorited – Paul Young May 28 '19 at 14:12
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An alternating voltage at that frequency is light. There's no 'generate' about it - the power supply is just a light source.

And if you have a wire, that is, a conductor made of metal, then the light won't propagate inside it at depths longer than the skin depth for that material at that particular frequency, which is generally tiny.

Emilio Pisanty
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    I don't object to this, but a periodic change in the electromagnetic field and a periodic fluctuation in electron density and momentum are, to me, distinct concepts. Of course, you are right because the two hybridize as a collective excitation, but that kinda makes it hard to understand at the high school level. – Paul Young May 26 '19 at 14:38
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    @PaulYoung It is hard to justify when beginners are taught (incorrectly) that "electric current" the same as "electrons moving". But in any case, there is no law of physics that says "the laws of physics must be easy to justify!" – alephzero May 26 '19 at 15:00
  • @alpehzero - I agree with you! – Paul Young May 26 '19 at 15:22
  • so +1 for this answer – Paul Young May 26 '19 at 17:02
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    This is technically accurate but potentially misleading. Would an observer looking at the wire see the color blue? That is what the OP wants to know. – Owen May 27 '19 at 00:08
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    @Owen Which aspect of "the light won't propagate inside the wire past the skin depth" is unclear or misleading? – Emilio Pisanty May 27 '19 at 00:14
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    @alephzero : The idea that electric current is "electrons moving" isn't completely "wrong", it's incomplete : electric current is charge moving, which may or may not be electrons. In this case , however, it is electrons, and thus the question of the adequacy or not of that "high school" definition is unimportant here. The distinction between a moving electric field and moving charges is very important since it is at the heart of the oft-posed question when first encountering drift velocity - "why does the light turn on 'instantly' when I flip the switch if electrons crawl?" – The_Sympathizer May 27 '19 at 02:54
  • That said, the way @Paul Young has described electric current isn't quite right - the current is the movement of the electrons past any given point in the wire, not the "change in density": that is a consequence of this movement being non-uniform throughout the wire due to the size of the wire being far in excess of the wavelength (and hence completely annihilating Kirchhoff's junction rule and making this circuit a Real Circuit that needs Real Tools to deal with, a Real Cow and not a sphere painted to look like a cow.). – The_Sympathizer May 27 '19 at 03:00
  • (For analogy, in a simple AC circuit at mains frequency [50/60 Hz typically] like one's house wiring, there is virtually no density change) – The_Sympathizer May 27 '19 at 03:02
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    @EmilioPisanty : Perhaps not inaccurate or misleading, but your post does seem to not entirely answer the OP's question which is whether or not that such a wire, carrying such a current, would shine light out the sides that would be noticeable to a human who were looking at it with their eyes like a glow stick. – The_Sympathizer May 27 '19 at 03:03
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    I think you are forgetting that oscillating longitudinal electric fields at that frequency (which is how the signal is carried in a metal) would not be light, a transverse wave, but a plasmon. Of course at the interface of the metal and vacuum there may be some conversion to ordinary light but it's still mostly a plasmon. – KF Gauss May 27 '19 at 03:20
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    Does this actually answer the question? It seems that it does not. Would the wire emit light? If the light would only propagate a tiny distance within the material, does that mean that light beginning at a place within the material that is closer to the edge than the limit of propagation would escape the material and be seen? I think this is where confusion is coming and will continue to come from. – Clonkex May 27 '19 at 03:20
  • @EmilioPisanty Does the fact that light won't propagate beyond the skin depth tell the full story? You can emit RF and MF radiation by winding the wire into a coil and oscillating the current through the coil. What if you wound the wire into a very tight coil (shorter than the wavelength of a 670 THz wave in the wire) and oscillated the current at that speed? There might be a difference between those two situations, but is it the skin depth? – Owen May 27 '19 at 03:56
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    Re “light won't propagate inside [a conductor made of metal]_”: Note that when a conductor carries RF current, _most of the electromagnetic field propagates outside the metal, within the dielectric that lies between it and the conductor that serves as a return wire. Such pair of conductors functions as a wave guide, and it definitely can propagate light if it has the proper shape/dimensions and the dielectric is transparent to light. – Edgar Bonet May 27 '19 at 07:47
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    A small thought experiment: Take a radio antenna (a resonator), attach a transistor as a positive feedback amplifier (fed by a DC current), so that the resonator oscillates at radio frequency on its own. Scale this down. We can make chips today with features on the scale of tens of nanometers, including transistors that can act as positive feedback amplifiers. Would it really be impossible to build such a light emitter, provided we can make sufficiently fast transistors? I guess, the critical part is the transistor, not the wire, as the entire structure would be smaller than the skin depth. – cmaster - reinstate monica May 27 '19 at 22:05
  • "the light won't propagate inside it at depths longer than the skin depth" -- Ok, so you're saying if I get a wire that is thinner than skin, then I will see blue light? (This is likely why Clonkex said that your answer doesn't directly answer the question.) – Greg Schmit May 28 '19 at 17:16
  • @Greg If the wire is shorter than the skin depth, then yes. From my side, I've answered the question at a level commensurate with the question way it was asked, but I don't see the point in investing additional time on this thread, and I'm not going to play a reply monkey to the HNQ crowd's demands on this occasion. (If that disappoints you, then sorry. You're obviously welcome to downvote.) If OP has additional queries then I'm happy to clarify. – Emilio Pisanty May 28 '19 at 21:18
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I second this Emilio Pisanty's point: the power supply you are envisioning is a light source. Now the question that remains is: can you propagate this light through a wire, just like you would do with a regular low-frequency electric signal?

To get a hint of the answer, look at how people use wires to transport high frequency signals, into the many MHz up to the multi-GHz range. A single wire doesn't work, because it has a tendency to radiate all the power you feed it into the air as free electromagnetic waves. The trick is to use two wires carrying opposite currents. You can think of them as one being the signal and the other being the return wire, but they are symmetrical so their roles could be reversed. If you keep them close enough, most of the electromagnetic field will be confined between them, and you will be able to transmit the power without too much losses. You can further reduce the losses by twisting the wires together. At the highest frequencies, you would get best results by putting one wire inside the other which, shaped like a tube, functions like a shield. This is called a coaxial cable, and some of them are good up to tens of GHz.

The thing that is not so intuitive is that, while the metal wires carry the current, the actual power is carried by the electromagnetic field that propagates between the wires. So the main role of the metal wires is thus to guide the electromagnetic waves and, for this reason, the high-frequency cables are considered to be waveguides.

Could you adapt this waveguide technique to the propagation of light? The answer is yes, some people have indeed built nanosized coaxial cables for this very purpose.

Edgar Bonet
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    An optical fiber is exactly a waveguide for visible light. – hmakholm left over Monica May 27 '19 at 11:11
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    @HenningMakholm: Indeed, but it's usually made of non-conducting material. The nano-coax I linked to is then a better analogous to the typical metal wires the OP seems to have in mind. – Edgar Bonet May 27 '19 at 12:14
  • This is an interesting paper, I would be curious to know how they couple into and out of that nano-coax. While it may use conductive components in its construction, I can't help but feel that it effectively acts in much the same way as a normal optical fiber. I don't believe we have any means of exciting an electrical signal at ~600THz into such a cable. Other than shining a blue laser at it and coupling it in with optical techniques, how could you put energy into that nano-coax cable? – J... May 28 '19 at 15:05
  • "the power supply you are envisioning is a light source. Now the question that remains is: can you propagate this light through a wire" - actually isn't the question "given no blue light, how do I generate blue light?" For example, maybe I can rotate a charged rod at $10^{15}$ revolutions per second in front a a wire and induce a current to generate blue light? I think that is the spirit of the OP's question – Paul Young May 28 '19 at 22:04
  • I can certainly generate radio waves in this exact manner – Paul Young May 28 '19 at 22:07
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    @J.. As a thought experiment, imagine taking any standard RF oscillator, and scaling it way down so it's a few tens of nanomatres across and oscillates in the frequency range of blue light. Now you connect the output to your scaled down coax. At the other end of the tiny coax you make a shielded dipole antenna and look at it. Is it glowing blue? – user253751 May 28 '19 at 22:15
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    @immibis It's not my imagination that's lacking - my intuition tells me that physics will protest before your scaling experiment gets to the required size. If you've read a paper where this has actually been done, or at least has been even theorized to be possible, I'd be interested to read it. – J... May 28 '19 at 22:18
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We do have a power supply which can generate current oscillations at optical frequencies: light. It won't transmit any distance along a wire, but if your "current source" and antenna are the same object, you have what is called an optical antenna, and the study of these is an active field of research. I don't know if any of them have any meaningful efficiency down at blue light frequencies, but they do work in the green which is not too far off. See, for example, this review article.

llama
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Even at tens of gigaherts, one does not carry current "in" a conductor -- it is carried along the outside (Google "skin effect").

There are transmission lines for high-frequency RF that basically launch an RF wave along a single naked wire, and catch it at the other end -- think of a coax without the outer shield. If you take this analogy and pursue it into absurdity and beyond, then if you take a really well polished wire, and really carefully launch blue light along its length, then as long as the wire doesn't bend too suddenly, the light -- or some portion of it -- will be refracted and "stick*" to the wire.

I think you could achieve a setup in a lab that involved people looking at a blue-glowing end of a carefully-maintained copper wire or gold wire and going "oooh!". I doubt there is much potential for practical use here.

* Imprecise language used on purpose -- I'd have to do a lot of work to do the math on this one!

TimWescott
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  • "Imprecise language used on purpose" - indeed ... I am waiting for someone to say "frequency dependent permittivity", "maxwell's equations", "boundary conditions at the interface" and "quantum effects" ... the OP's question seems to be at the gnarly coal-face where electrical engineers meet physicists and can't talk to one another – Paul Young May 30 '19 at 15:39
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Yeah definitely . You can create light corresponding on any frequency by this method. It’s just that creating this circuit will be very challenging. To give you a perspective, the highest frequency that we have obtained with modern electronic circuits is around 10^11 Hz.

  • a) Source? b) If we can create 10^11 Hz, how does that relate to tetrahertz? Is it more or less? – Clonkex May 27 '19 at 03:13
  • @Clonkex kilo, mega, giga, tera? Steps of 3. – Peter - Reinstate Monica May 27 '19 at 05:37
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    @PeterA.Schneider I mean, I know how to read numbers in scientific notation, and I know what tera means (ugh, I wrote tetra by accident in my last comment), but it's not from immediately obvious whether 10^11 is smaller or larger than the required 610-670 THz, given I commonly work directly with such large numbers. I'm sure others will know without any effort whatsoever that 1 THz is 10^12 Hz, but I had to sit and think about it. – Clonkex May 27 '19 at 07:00
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    @Ishan I guess the easiest way to create such an oscillation in the metal electrons is ... to shine a blue light at them. And lo and behold, the metal will shine blue right back ;-). As Emilio so insightfully observed, the oscillations won't penerate the metal very deeply, it's kind of a surface effect. – Peter - Reinstate Monica May 27 '19 at 10:55
  • This is true, but as a thought experiment, suppose we scale down any RF oscillator so it's only a few nanometres across and oscillates at these frequencies. – user253751 May 28 '19 at 22:16
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    At a few nanometres, you'd be hand soldering molecules. – rackandboneman May 28 '19 at 23:19