Cyclotron resonance describes the interaction of external forces with charged particles experiencing a magnetic field, thus moving on a circular path. It is named after the cyclotron, a cyclic particle accelerator that utilizes an oscillating electric field tuned to this resonance to add kinetic energy to charged particles.
The cyclotron frequency or gyrofrequency is the frequency of a charged particle moving perpendicular to the direction of a uniform magnetic field B (constant magnitude and direction).
SI units | CGS units |
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Since the motion in an orthogonal and constant magnetic field is always circular, [1] the cyclotron frequency is given by equality of centripetal force and magnetic Lorentz force
with the particle mass m, its charge q, velocity v, and the circular path radius r, also called gyroradius.
The angular speed is then:
Giving the rotational frequency (being the cyclotron frequency) as:
It is notable that the cyclotron frequency is independent of the radius and velocity and therefore independent of the particle's kinetic energy; all particles with the same charge-to-mass ratio rotate around magnetic field lines with the same frequency. This is only true in the non-relativistic limit, and underpins the principle of operation of the cyclotron.
The cyclotron frequency is also useful in non-uniform magnetic fields, in which (assuming slow variation of magnitude of the magnetic field) the movement is approximately helical - in the direction parallel to the magnetic field, the motion is uniform, whereas in the plane perpendicular to the magnetic field the movement is, as previously circular. The sum of these two motions gives a trajectory in the shape of a helix.
When the charged particle begins to approach relativistic speeds, the centripetal force should be multiplied by the Lorentz factor, yielding a corresponding factor in the angular frequency:
The above is for SI units. In some cases, the cyclotron frequency is given in Gaussian units. [2] In Gaussian units, the Lorentz force differs by a factor of 1/c, the speed of light, which leads to:
For materials with little or no magnetism (i.e. ) , so we can use the easily measured magnetic field intensity H instead of B: [3]
Note that converting this expression to SI units introduces a factor of the vacuum permeability.
For some materials, the motion of electrons follows loops that depend on the applied magnetic field, but not exactly the same way. For these materials, we define a cyclotron effective mass, so that:
Maxwell's equations, or Maxwell–Heaviside equations, are a set of coupled partial differential equations that, together with the Lorentz force law, form the foundation of classical electromagnetism, classical optics, electric and magnetic circuits. The equations provide a mathematical model for electric, optical, and radio technologies, such as power generation, electric motors, wireless communication, lenses, radar, etc. They describe how electric and magnetic fields are generated by charges, currents, and changes of the fields. The equations are named after the physicist and mathematician James Clerk Maxwell, who, in 1861 and 1862, published an early form of the equations that included the Lorentz force law. Maxwell first used the equations to propose that light is an electromagnetic phenomenon. The modern form of the equations in their most common formulation is credited to Oliver Heaviside.
A cyclotron is a type of particle accelerator invented by Ernest Lawrence in 1929–1930 at the University of California, Berkeley, and patented in 1932. A cyclotron accelerates charged particles outwards from the center of a flat cylindrical vacuum chamber along a spiral path. The particles are held to a spiral trajectory by a static magnetic field and accelerated by a rapidly varying electric field. Lawrence was awarded the 1939 Nobel Prize in Physics for this invention.
Cyclotron radiation is electromagnetic radiation emitted by non-relativistic accelerating charged particles deflected by a magnetic field. The Lorentz force on the particles acts perpendicular to both the magnetic field lines and the particles' motion through them, creating an acceleration of charged particles that causes them to emit radiation as a result of the acceleration they undergo as they spiral around the lines of the magnetic field.
Synchrotron radiation is the electromagnetic radiation emitted when relativistic charged particles are subject to an acceleration perpendicular to their velocity. It is produced artificially in some types of particle accelerators or naturally by fast electrons moving through magnetic fields. The radiation produced in this way has a characteristic polarization, and the frequencies generated can range over a large portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) is a phenomenon observed in plasma physics, condensed matter physics, and accelerator physics. It happens when the frequency of incident radiation coincides with the natural frequency of rotation of electrons in magnetic fields. A free electron in a static and uniform magnetic field will move in a circle due to the Lorentz force. The circular motion may be superimposed with a uniform axial motion, resulting in a helix, or with a uniform motion perpendicular to the field resulting in a cycloid. The angular frequency of this cyclotron motion for a given magnetic field strength B is given by
A synchrocyclotron is a special type of cyclotron, patented by Edwin McMillan in 1952, in which the frequency of the driving RF electric field is varied to compensate for relativistic effects as the particles' velocity begins to approach the speed of light. This is in contrast to the classical cyclotron, where this frequency is constant.
In physics, the gyromagnetic ratio of a particle or system is the ratio of its magnetic moment to its angular momentum, and it is often denoted by the symbol γ, gamma. Its SI unit is the radian per second per tesla (rad⋅s−1⋅T−1) or, equivalently, the coulomb per kilogram (C⋅kg−1).
In physics, the motion of an electrically charged particle such as an electron or ion in a plasma in a magnetic field can be treated as the superposition of a relatively fast circular motion around a point called the guiding center and a relatively slow drift of this point. The drift speeds may differ for various species depending on their charge states, masses, or temperatures, possibly resulting in electric currents or chemical separation.
A property of a physical system, such as the entropy of a gas, that stays approximately constant when changes occur slowly is called an adiabatic invariant. By this it is meant that if a system is varied between two end points, as the time for the variation between the end points is increased to infinity, the variation of an adiabatic invariant between the two end points goes to zero.
An ion trap is a combination of electric and/or magnetic fields used to capture charged particles — known as ions — often in a system isolated from an external environment. Atomic and molecular ion traps have a number of applications in physics and chemistry such as precision mass spectrometry, improved atomic frequency standards, and quantum computing. In comparison to neutral atom traps, ion traps have deeper trapping potentials that do not depend on the internal electronic structure of a trapped ion. This makes ion traps more suitable for the study of light interactions with single atomic systems. The two most popular types of ion traps are the Penning trap, which forms a potential via a combination of static electric and magnetic fields, and the Paul trap which forms a potential via a combination of static and oscillating electric fields.
In physics, a ponderomotive force is a nonlinear force that a charged particle experiences in an inhomogeneous oscillating electromagnetic field. It causes the particle to move towards the area of the weaker field strength, rather than oscillating around an initial point as happens in a homogeneous field. This occurs because the particle sees a greater magnitude of force during the half of the oscillation period while it is in the area with the stronger field. The net force during its period in the weaker area in the second half of the oscillation does not offset the net force of the first half, and so over a complete cycle this makes the particle move towards the area of lesser force.
In physics, Larmor precession is the precession of the magnetic moment of an object about an external magnetic field. The phenomenon is conceptually similar to the precession of a tilted classical gyroscope in an external torque-exerting gravitational field. Objects with a magnetic moment also have angular momentum and effective internal electric current proportional to their angular momentum; these include electrons, protons, other fermions, many atomic and nuclear systems, as well as classical macroscopic systems. The external magnetic field exerts a torque on the magnetic moment,
In electrodynamics, the Larmor formula is used to calculate the total power radiated by a nonrelativistic point charge as it accelerates. It was first derived by J. J. Larmor in 1897, in the context of the wave theory of light.
Electron scattering occurs when electrons are displaced from their original trajectory. This is due to the electrostatic forces within matter interaction or, if an external magnetic field is present, the electron may be deflected by the Lorentz force. This scattering typically happens with solids such as metals, semiconductors and insulators; and is a limiting factor in integrated circuits and transistors.
Plasma parameters define various characteristics of a plasma, an electrically conductive collection of charged and neutral particles of various species that responds collectively to electromagnetic forces. Such particle systems can be studied statistically, i.e., their behaviour can be described based on a limited number of global parameters instead of tracking each particle separately.
The gyroradius is the radius of the circular motion of a charged particle in the presence of a uniform magnetic field. In SI units, the non-relativistic gyroradius is given by where is the mass of the particle, is the component of the velocity perpendicular to the direction of the magnetic field, is the electric charge of the particle, and is the magnetic field flux density.
In quantum mechanics, the energies of cyclotron orbits of charged particles in a uniform magnetic field are quantized to discrete values, thus known as Landau levels. These levels are degenerate, with the number of electrons per level directly proportional to the strength of the applied magnetic field. It is named after the Soviet physicist Lev Landau.
Ion cyclotron resonance is a phenomenon related to the movement of ions in a magnetic field. It is used for accelerating ions in a cyclotron, and for measuring the masses of an ionized analyte in mass spectrometry, particularly with Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometers. It can also be used to follow the kinetics of chemical reactions in a dilute gas mixture, provided these involve charged species.
Electric dipole spin resonance (EDSR) is a method to control the magnetic moments inside a material using quantum mechanical effects like the spin–orbit interaction. Mainly, EDSR allows to flip the orientation of the magnetic moments through the use of electromagnetic radiation at resonant frequencies. EDSR was first proposed by Emmanuel Rashba.
The method of virtual quanta is a method used to calculate radiation produced by interactions of electromagnetic particles, particularly in the case of bremsstrahlung. It can also be applied in the context of gravitational radiation, and more recently to other field theories by Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker and Evan James Williams in 1934.