Construct · 1 fields · 3 citations

plasmon: a standalone construct

One name. One construct. A landmark on the map.

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plasmon1 CONSTRUCTPlasmonPINES & BOHM · PLASMON

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Condensed matter physics and optics

The quantum of collective electron-density oscillation in a solid

David Pines and David Bohm's 1952 paper on a collective description of electron interactions showed that the many electrons in a metal do not only move as independent particles but also sustain a coordinated, wave-like sloshing of their overall density, a collective oscillation of the electron gas at a characteristic frequency fixed by how densely the electrons are packed. In a 1956 review Pines named the quantum of this oscillation the plasmon, so a plasmon is one indivisible packet of energy of the collective electron-density wave, by analogy with the photon as the quantum of light. Because it is a collective motion of the whole electron gas rather than the displacement of any single electron, the plasmon carries an energy in ordinary metals of several electron-volts and shows up as sharp, regularly spaced energy losses when a fast electron is fired through a thin film. As a landmark the construct connects the quantum description of a strongly interacting many-body system to a directly measurable oscillation, and it names both the bulk plasmon inside a material and the surface plasmon bound to an interface, the latter now central to nanoscale optics and sensing.[1][2][3]

Unit
One quantum of the collective electron-density oscillation, carrying an energy equal to Planck's constant times the plasma frequency
Recovery means
Not applicable
Measured by
Identified by the characteristic energy-loss peaks in electron energy-loss spectroscopy and by optical and electron probes of the plasma frequency

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Nearby constructs

quantum4 fields · 7 citationsjingle · one word, four constructsexcitation3 fields · 3 citationsjingle · one word, three constructsresonance6 fields · 13 citationsjingle · one name, six constructs

References

  1. Pines, D., & Bohm, D. (1952). A collective description of electron interactions: II. Collective vs individual particle aspects of the interactions. Physical Review, 85(2), 338–353. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRev.85.338
  2. Bohm, D., & Pines, D. (1953). A collective description of electron interactions: III. Coulomb interactions in a degenerate electron gas. Physical Review, 92(3), 609–625. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRev.92.609
  3. Pines, D. (1956). Collective energy losses in solids. Reviews of Modern Physics, 28(3), 184–198. https://doi.org/10.1103/RevModPhys.28.184

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