Cryogenic electron emissions

[solrey]

This seems to be experimental proof that even cold "gas" throughout the universe can be in a plasma state of free electrons and ions. Meaning the whole of the universe is electrically active and conductive. Could an uneven distribution of cryogenic emissions be the "power source" that ultimately maintains charge separation in the coldest depths of the universe?

Physicist finds colder isn't always slower as electron emissions increase at temps to -452 F

In a recent paper in Europhysics Letters (Vol. 89, Issue 5), Meyer presents a thorough experimental investigation of the electron emission rate in the absence of light -- called the dark rate -- in which the rate of electron emission unexpectedly increases as a photomultiplier is cooled to liquid-helium temperature.

Once the temperature hit around -64 F (220 K) and as it continued down to the lowest temperature measured during the experiment, -452 degrees F (4 K), electron emission from the cathode surface of the photomultiplier steadily increased. This is in contrast to the usual behavior of nature where processes tend to slow down as things get colder.

Scientists have known about cryogenic emission for about 50 years. While other types of spontaneous electron emission without light are understood (thermal or heat, electrical field, and penetrating radiation electron emission), Meyer points out, "at this time, regrettably, a quantitative explanation of the observed characteristics of cryogenic emission is still eluding us."

"Most likely, this observation can eventually be explained within the known laws of physics, but there is always a small chance that we are seeing something new, and that this is a real discovery," he said.

Meyer suggests a trapping mechanism may be at work. How the trap is created and how it fills with or empties itself of electrons might be related to the behavior of traps in semiconductors. One clue pointing to a trap mechanism is the longer intervals between emitted electrons, from about three microseconds apart to three milliseconds apart as a given burst evolved.

A trap would hold electrons until full, then empty some electrons that become dark events measured by the photomultiplier, while others would recombine with an electron hole and thus go undetected. As fewer electrons remained, the release rate would slow.

Similar to what's been mentioned on other threads about similarities between plasma and semiconductors, phase space holes and electric circuits.

cheers

[jjohnson]

...in the absence of light.

? I understand that they ran the experiment and cooled down the photomultiplier, but by light do they mean visible light only, to excite the tube to emit? I'd argue that there is always light, at any real temperature, with a decreasing energy level as its source temperature is decreased. For example, the walls of the enclosure (needed to block any stray "light") will itself radiate due to thermal emission, likely in the far infrared to radio wavelengths depending on temperature.

Perhaps there may be enough energy from this type of radiation to cause some emission. However, the increasing level of light emissions within the tube as the temperature is lowered poses interesting questions. It's like, why bother to cool down your astronomical camera if the random light emission will just increase? Maybe as detectors are cooled, they hit some minimum emission point and then it starts increasing again. -then again, a typical camera chip is simply a "bucket" to register incident photons, not a photomultiplier tube, which is designed to create a cascade of sufficient strength to identify a "hit" or event.

I think it is a certainty that there can be "cold gas" which consists of charged particles in some fraction greater than zero - in which case it is technically a plasma - as well as neutral gas. Given that no matter where in space you are, you could look around you and see stars or dust or detect heat, radio waves, or X-rays and the occasional gamma ray, plus the CMB radiation, loose gas in intergalactic and interstellar space will always and continuously be subject to incident radiation. Plus, if the experiment above is accurate, neutral atoms can emit electrons now and then at an increased rate as they cool.

Each of the latter event results in two charged particles moving apart relative to each other, further charging the population of particles. In that case, it seems inevitable that a fraction of any free gas population in space consists of ionized species. It may, in fact, be natural for free, cold atom populations to become mostly ionized! Does ionization, where electron emission vectors are (at least initially) in random directions, increase the thermal energy of the rarefied cold 'gas', and increase its mixing and therefore increase re-absorption and neutralization of the population?

It seems difficult to imagine a scenario in the 'Verse where forces - any forces - have completely evacuated all the matter from a finite volume of space, rendering it empty. So, and particularly in highly rarefied cold gases where the Brownian mean free path is so large compared to the cross-section of the resident particles, charged or not, that the mean free path lengths limit collision probabilities to years to eons apart, it should be easy for the charged particles to co-exist or interact extremely weakly with one another nearly all the time, especially given the "occasional" presence of sufficiently-ionizing radiation to refresh the charged population. Thinly scattered plasmas will not "clump up into proto-stellar disks" under the force of gravity alone. That's a weak argument in more ways than one. They will behave in response to their constantly changing electric and magnetic interactions. Those might result in large parallel currents over time, etc. with the predicted EU reactions in terms of galactic and stellar formations, or they may remain in the deep freeze of space between galactic clusters for an indefinite period of time without significant interaction.

Thanks for this paper, Solrey. It's absorbing to contemplate some of its possible consequences.

Jim

[webolife]

The concept of electrons as low energy photons [regardless of your particular model of either of these phenomena, pun intended] has been around for some time. That electron detectors should "resonate" at these low energy levels seems expected... (btw, R A Smith considers electrons, as light, to be just one more manifestation of the universal T-field.)