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- light
- luminescence
- X-ray
- photoelectric effect
- emission
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The German physicist Johann Wilhelm Ritter, having learned of Herschel’s discovery of infrared waves, looked beyond the violet end of the visible spectrum of the Sun and found (in 1801) that there exist invisible rays that darken silver chloride even more efficiently than visible light. This spectral region extending between visible light and X-rays is designated ultraviolet. Sources of this form of electromagnetic radiation are hot objects like the Sun, synchrotron radiation sources, mercury or xenon arc lamps, and gaseous discharge tubes filled with gas atoms (e.g., mercury, deuterium, or hydrogen) that have internal electron energy levels which correspond to the photons of ultraviolet light.
When ultraviolet light strikes certain materials, it causes them to fluoresce—i.e., they emit electromagnetic radiation of lower energy, such as visible light. The spectrum of fluorescent light is characteristic of a material’s composition and thus can be used for screening minerals, detecting bacteria in spoiled food, identifying pigments, or detecting forgeries of artworks and other objects (the aged surfaces of ancient marble sculptures, for instance, fluoresce yellow-green, whereas a freshly cut marble surface fluoresces bright violet).
Optical instruments for the ultraviolet region are made of special materials, such as quartz, certain silicates, and metal fluorides, which are transparent at least in the near ultraviolet. Far-ultraviolet radiation is absorbed by nearly all gases and materials and thus requires reflection optics in vacuum chambers.
Ultraviolet radiation is detected by photographic plates and by means of the photoelectric effect in photomultiplier tubes. Also, ultraviolet radiation can be converted to visible light by fluorescence before detection.
The relatively high energy of ultraviolet light gives rise to certain photochemical reactions. This characteristic is exploited to produce cyanotype impressions on fabrics and for blueprinting design drawings. Here, the fabric or paper is treated with a mixture of chemicals that react upon exposure to ultraviolet light to form an insoluble blue compound. Electronic excitations caused by ultraviolet radiation also produce changes in the colour and transparency of photosensitive and photochromic glasses. Photochemical and photostructural changes in certain polymers constitute the basis for photolithography and the processing of the microelectronic circuits.
Although invisible to the eyes of humans and most vertebrates, near-ultraviolet light can be seen by many insects. Butterflies and many flowers that appear to have identical colour patterns under visible light are distinctly different when viewed under the ultraviolet rays perceptible to insects.
An important difference between ultraviolet light and electromagnetic radiation of lower frequencies is the ability of the former to ionize, meaning that it can knock an electron out from atoms and molecules. All high-frequency electromagnetic radiation beyond the visible—i.e., ultraviolet light, X-rays, and gamma rays—is ionizing and therefore harmful to body tissues, living cells, and DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). The harmful effects of ultraviolet light to humans and larger animals are mitigated by the fact that this form of radiation does not penetrate much further than the skin.
The body of a sunbather is struck by 1021 photons every second, and 1 percent of these, or more than a billion billion per second, are photons of ultraviolet radiation. Tanning and natural body pigments help to protect the skin to some degree, preventing the destruction of skin cells by ultraviolet light. Nevertheless, overexposure to the ultraviolet component of sunlight can cause skin cancer, cataracts of the eyes, and damage to the body’s immune system. Fortunately, a layer of ozone (O3) in the stratosphere absorbs the most-damaging ultraviolet rays, which have wavelengths of 2000 and 2900 angstroms (one angstrom [Å] = 10−10 metre), and attenuates those with wavelengths between 2900 and 3150 Å. Without this protective layer of ozone, life on Earth would not be possible. The ozone layer is produced at an altitude of about 10 to 50 km (6 to 30 miles) above Earth’s surface by a reaction between upward-diffusing molecular oxygen (O2) and downward-diffusing ionized atomic oxygen (O+). In the late 20th century this life-protecting stratospheric ozone layer was reduced by chlorine atoms in chlorofluorocarbon (or Freon) gases released into the atmosphere by aerosol propellants, air-conditioner coolants, solvents used in the manufacture of electronic components, and other sources. Limits were placed on the sale of ozone-depleting chemicals, and the ozone layer was expected to recover eventually.
Ionized atomic oxygen, nitrogen, and nitric oxide are produced in the upper atmosphere by absorption of solar ultraviolet radiation. This ionized region is the ionosphere, which affects radio communications and reflects and absorbs radio waves of frequencies below 40 MHz.
X-rays
The German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovered X-rays in 1895 by accident while studying cathode rays in a low-pressure gas discharge tube. (A few years later J.J. Thomson of England showed that cathode rays were electrons emitted from the negative electrode [cathode] of the discharge tube.) Röntgen noticed the fluorescence of a barium platinocyanide screen that happened to lie near the discharge tube. He traced the source of the hitherto undetected form of radiation to the point where the cathode rays hit the wall of the discharge tube, and he mistakenly concluded from his inability to observe reflection or refraction that his new rays were unrelated to light. Because of his uncertainty about their nature, he called them X-radiation. This early failure can be attributed to the very short wavelengths of X-rays (10−8 to 10−11 cm), which correspond to photon energies from 200 to 100,000 eV. In 1912 another German physicist, Max von Laue, realized that the regular arrangement of atoms in crystals should provide a natural grating of the right spacing (about 10−8 cm) to produce an interference pattern on a photographic plate when X-rays pass through such a crystal. The success of this experiment, carried out by Walter Friedrich and Paul Knipping, not only identified X-rays with electromagnetic radiation but also initiated the use of X-rays for studying the detailed atomic structure of crystals. The interference of X-rays diffracted in certain directions from crystals in so-called X-ray diffractometers, in turn, permits the dissection of X-rays into their different frequencies, just as a prism diffracts and spreads the various colours of light. The spectral composition and characteristic frequencies of X-rays emitted by a given X-ray source can thus be measured. As in optical spectroscopy, the X-ray photons emitted correspond to the differences of the internal electronic energies in atoms and molecules. Because of their much higher energies, however, X-ray photons are associated with the inner-shell electrons close to the atomic nuclei, whereas optical absorption and emission are related to the outermost electrons in atoms or in materials in general. Since the outer electrons are used for chemical bonding while the energies of inner-shell electrons remain essentially unaffected by atomic bonding, the identity and quantity of elements that make up a material are more accurately determined by the emission, absorption, or fluorescence of X-rays than of photons of visible or ultraviolet light.
The contrast between body parts in medical X-ray photographs (radiographs) is produced by the different scattering and absorption of X-rays by bones and tissues. Within months of Röntgen’s discovery of X-rays and his first X-ray photograph of his wife’s hand, this form of electromagnetic radiation became indispensable in orthopedic and dental medicine. The use of X-rays for obtaining images of the body’s interior has undergone considerable development over the years and has culminated in the highly sophisticated procedure known as computed tomography (CAT; see radiation).
Notwithstanding their usefulness in medical diagnosis, the ability of X-rays to ionize atoms and molecules and their penetrating power make them a potential health hazard. Exposure of body cells and tissue to large doses of such ionizing radiation can result in abnormalities in DNA that may lead to cancer and birth defects. (For a detailed treatment of the effects of X-rays and other forms of ionizing radiation on human health and the levels of such radiation encountered in daily life, see radiation: Biological effects of ionizing radiation.)
X-rays are produced in X-ray tubes by the deceleration of energetic electrons (bremsstrahlung) as they hit a metal target or by accelerating electrons moving at relativistic velocities in circular orbits (synchrotron radiation; see above Continuous spectra of electromagnetic radiation). They are detected by their photochemical action in photographic emulsions or by their ability to ionize gas atoms. Every X-ray photon produces a burst of electrons and ions, resulting in a current pulse. By counting the rate of such current pulses per second, the intensity of a flux of X-rays can be measured. Instruments used for this purpose are called Geiger counters.
X-ray astronomy has revealed very strong sources of X-rays in deep space. In the Milky Way Galaxy, of which the solar system is a part, the most-intense sources are certain double-star systems in which one of the two stars is thought to be either a compact neutron star or a black hole. The ionized gas of the circling companion star falls by gravitation into the compact star, generating X-rays that may be more than 1,000 times as intense as the total amount of light emitted by the Sun. At the moment of their explosion, supernovae emit a good fraction of their energy in a burst of X-rays.
Gamma rays
Six years after the discovery of radioactivity (1896) by Henri Becquerel of France, the New Zealand-born British physicist Ernest Rutherford found that three different kinds of radiation are emitted in the decay of radioactive substances; these he called alpha, beta, and gamma rays in sequence of their ability to penetrate matter. The alpha particles were found to be identical with the nuclei of helium atoms, and the beta rays were identified as electrons. In 1912 it was shown that the much more penetrating gamma rays have all the properties of very energetic electromagnetic radiation, or photons. Gamma-ray photons are between 10,000 and 10,000,000 times more energetic than the photons of visible light when they originate from radioactive atomic nuclei. Gamma rays with a million million times higher energy make up a very small part of the cosmic rays that reach Earth from supernovae or from other galaxies. The origin of the most-energetic gamma rays is not yet known.
During radioactive decay, an unstable nucleus usually emits alpha particles, electrons, gamma rays, and neutrinos spontaneously. In nuclear fission, the unstable nucleus breaks into fragments, which are themselves complex nuclei, along with such particles as neutrons and protons. The resultant stable nuclei or nuclear fragments are usually in a highly excited state and then reach their low-energy ground state by emitting one or more gamma rays. Such a decay scheme is shown schematically in for the unstable nucleus sodium-24 (24Na). Much of what is known about the internal structure and energies of nuclei has been obtained from the emission or resonant absorption of gamma rays by nuclei. Absorption of gamma rays by nuclei can cause them to eject neutrons or alpha particles or it can even split a nucleus like a bursting bubble in what is called photodisintegration. A gamma particle hitting a hydrogen nucleus (that is, a proton), for example, produces a positive pi-meson and a neutron or a neutral pi-meson and a proton. Neutral pi-mesons, in turn, have a very brief mean life of 1.8 × 10−16 second and decay into two gamma rays of energy hν ≈ 70 MeV. When an energetic gamma ray hν > 1.02 MeV passes a nucleus, it may disappear while creating an electron–positron pair. Gamma photons interact with matter by discrete elementary processes that include resonant absorption, photodisintegration, ionization, scattering (Compton scattering), or pair production.
Gamma rays are detected by their ability to ionize gas atoms or to create electron–hole pairs in semiconductors or insulators. By counting the rate of charge pulses or voltage pulses or by measuring the scintillation of the light emitted by the subsequently recombining electron–hole pairs, one can determine the number and energy of gamma rays striking an ionization detector or scintillation counter.
Both the specific energy of the gamma-ray photon emitted as well as the half-life of the specific radioactive decay process that yields the photon identify the type of nuclei at hand and their concentrations. By bombarding stable nuclei with neutrons, one can artificially convert more than 70 different stable nuclei into radioactive nuclei and use their characteristic gamma emission for purposes of identification, for impurity analysis of metallurgical specimens (neutron-activation analysis), or as radioactive tracers with which to determine the functions or malfunctions of human organs, to follow the life cycles of organisms, or to determine the effects of chemicals on biological systems and plants.
The great penetrating power of gamma rays stems from the fact that they have no electric charge and thus do not interact with matter as strongly as do charged particles. Because of their penetrating power gamma rays can be used for radiographing holes and defects in metal castings and other structural parts. At the same time, this property makes gamma rays extremely hazardous. The lethal effect of this form of ionizing radiation makes it useful for sterilizing medical supplies that cannot be sanitized by boiling or for killing organisms that cause food spoilage. More than 50 percent of the ionizing radiation to which humans are exposed comes from natural radon gas, which is an end product of the radioactive decay chain of natural radioactive substances in minerals. Radon escapes from the ground and enters the environment in varying amounts.
Historical survey
Development of the classical radiation theory
The classical electromagnetic radiation theory “remains for all time one of the greatest triumphs of human intellectual endeavor.” So said Max Planck in 1931, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the birth of the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell, the prime originator of this theory. The theory was indeed of great significance, for it not only united the phenomena of electricity, magnetism, and light in a unified framework but also was a fundamental revision of the then-accepted Newtonian way of thinking about the forces in the physical universe. The development of the classical radiation theory constituted a conceptual revolution that lasted for nearly half a century. It began with the seminal work of the British physicist and chemist Michael Faraday, who published his article “Thoughts on Ray Vibrations” in Philosophical Magazine in May 1846, and came to fruition in 1888 when Hertz succeeded in generating electromagnetic waves at radio and microwave frequencies and measuring their properties.
Wave theory and corpuscular theory
The Newtonian view of the universe may be described as a mechanistic interpretation. All components of the universe, small or large, obey the laws of mechanics, and all phenomena are in the last analysis based on matter in motion. A conceptual difficulty in Newtonian mechanics, however, is the way in which the gravitational force between two massive objects acts over a distance across empty space. Newton did not address this question, but many of his contemporaries hypothesized that the gravitational force was mediated through an invisible and frictionless medium which Aristotle had called the ether (or aether). The problem is that everyday experience of natural phenomena shows mechanical things to be moved by forces which make contact. Any cause and effect without a discernible contact, or “action at a distance,” contradicts common sense and has been an unacceptable notion since antiquity. Whenever the nature of the transmission of certain actions and effects over a distance was not yet understood, the ether was resorted to as a conceptual solution of the transmitting medium. By necessity, any description of how the ether functioned remained vague, but its existence was required by common sense and thus not questioned.
In Newton’s day, light was one phenomenon, besides gravitation, whose effects were apparent at large distances from its source. Newton contributed greatly to the scientific knowledge of light. His experiments revealed that white light is a composite of many colours, which can be dispersed by a prism and reunited to again yield white light. The propagation of light along straight lines convinced him that it consists of tiny particles which emanate at high or infinite speed from the light source. The first observation from which a finite speed of light was deduced was made soon thereafter, in 1676, by the Danish astronomer Ole Rømer (see below Speed of light).
Observations of two phenomena strongly suggested that light propagates as waves. One of these involved interference by thin films, which was discovered in England independently by Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke. The other had to do with the diffraction of light in the geometric shadow of an opaque screen. The latter was also discovered by Hooke, who published a wave theory of light in 1665 to explain it.
The Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens greatly improved the wave theory and explained reflection and refraction in terms of what is now called Huygens’ principle. According to this principle (published in 1690), each point on a wave front in the hypothetical ether or in an optical medium is a source of a new spherical light wave and the wave front is the envelope of all the individual wavelets that originate from the old wave front.
In 1669 another Danish scientist, Erasmus Bartholin, discovered the polarization of light by double refraction in Iceland spar (calcite). This finding had a profound effect on the conception of the nature of light. At that time, the only waves known were those of sound, which are longitudinal. It was inconceivable to both Newton and Huygens that light could consist of transverse waves in which vibrations are perpendicular to the direction of propagation. Huygens gave a satisfactory account of double refraction by proposing that the asymmetry of the structure of Iceland spar causes the secondary wavelets to be ellipsoidal instead of spherical in his wave front construction. Since Huygens believed in longitudinal waves, he failed, however, to understand the phenomena associated with polarized light. Newton, on the other hand, used these phenomena as the bases for an additional argument for his corpuscular theory of light. Particles, he argued in 1717, have “sides” and can thus exhibit properties that depend on the directions perpendicular to the direction of motion.
It may be surprising that Huygens did not make use of the phenomenon of interference to support his wave theory; but for him waves were actually pulses instead of periodic waves with a certain wavelength. One should bear in mind that the word wave may have a very different conceptual meaning and convey different images at various times to different people.
It took nearly a century before a new wave theory was formulated by the physicists Thomas Young of England and Augustin-Jean Fresnel of France. Based on his experiments on interference, Young realized for the first time that light is a transverse wave. Fresnel then succeeded in explaining all optical phenomena known at the beginning of the 19th century with a new wave theory. No proponents of the corpuscular light theory remained. Nonetheless, it is always satisfying when a competing theory is discarded on grounds that one of its principal predictions is contradicted by experiment. The corpuscular theory explained the refraction of light passing from a medium of given density to a denser one in terms of the attraction of light particles into the latter. This means the light velocity should be larger in the denser medium. Huygens’ construction of wave fronts waving across the boundary between two optical media predicted the opposite—that is to say, a smaller light velocity in the denser medium. The measurement of the light velocity in air and water by Armand-Hippolyte-Louis Fizeau and independently by Léon Foucault during the mid-19th century decided the case in favour of the wave theory (see below Speed of light).
The transverse wave nature of light implied that the ether must be a solid elastic medium. The larger velocity of light suggested, moreover, a great elastic stiffness of this medium. Yet, it was recognized that all celestial bodies move through the ether without encountering such difficulties as friction. These conceptual problems remained unsolved until the beginning of the 20th century.
Hellmut Fritzsche