Radiative Processes

in Astrophysics
5. Radiation from
moving charges (contd)&
starting relativity
Eline Tolstoy
http://www.astro.rug.nl/~etolstoy/astroa07/

Visualize dipole & multipole radiation

http://www.kettering.edu/~drussell/Demos/rad2/mdq.html

This page is about sound waves, so some of the text provided with each movie
doesnt apply in the case of em-waves - but the visualisation is accurate.

DIPOLE RADIATION

An Electric Dipole Varying In Magnitude by 10 %

Radiation Summary
For ! <<1
The Poynting vector gives the direction and
magnitude of energy flow in an em-field,
and in the direction n, it has magnitude:
The energy emitted, dW per unit time into a solid angle d! about n can be
evaluated by multiplying the Poynting vector by the area (dA=R2d!)

LARMORS FORMULA

Dipole moment
dipole moment

DIPOLE
APPROXIMATION

geometry & emission pattern for

dipole radiation.

Dipole spectrum depends directly on the frequencies of the oscillations of

the charges in the system.

Thomson (electron) Scattering

An important application of the dipole formula is a free electron radiating in
response to an incident em-wave (E=B). The force due to a linearly polarised
sinusoidal wave:
in terms of dipole moment, d=er

which describes an oscillating dipole of amplitude

Using the time averaged Poynting vector
The differential cross section, d" for scattering into d!,

THOMSON CROSS-SECTION

Thomson scattering & Polarisation

http://background.uchicago.edu/~whu/intermediate/Polarization/polar1.html

Radiation Reaction Force

We can conclude that there must be a force acting on a particle by virtue of

the radiation it produces - RADIATION REACTION FORCE.
radiation reaction produces a perturbation on particle motion, where T is the
time interval over which the kinetic energy is changed substantially by the
emission of radiation:

Estimate v/a ~ tp, as the typical orbital time scale, which means that T/tp>>1
will greatly exceed the orbital time (or oscillator period) requires that tp >> #,
the time for light to cross an electron radius,

Harmonically bound particles: undriven

An undriven harmonic system is defined by a restoring force that depends
linearly on displacement:
If a charge is an harmonic oscillator it will emit radiation. Because of the
radiation reaction force, the oscillation will dampen: a damped harmonic
oscillator:

The solution of this differential equation is:

Bounday conditions x(t=0)=x0 and

(t=0)=0

In the discussion on the dipole approx we learnt:

i.e., the spectrum depends upon the Fourier transform of the dipole moment,
and since d = qx

The Lorentz Profile

used to describe intrinsic shape of

spectral lines
Radiation damping imposes a minimum width on spectral lines from
electronic oscillators: $% = & = 2e2%02/3mc3 or equivalently in wavelength
$' = ('/%0)(% = 2)ct ~ 1.2 x 10-4 Angstrom

Harmonically bound particles: driven

If we add a driving term to the equation of the harmonic oscillator (e.g., an
incident em-wave), we can derive scattering by bound electrons

One can now derive that the total emitted power is given by

1. % >> %0: "(%) * "T For incident energies much higher than binding
energy of electron, electron behaves as if free: Thomson scattering.
2. % << %0: "(%) * "T(%/%0)4 Rayleigh scattering.
3. % + %0: near resonance.

Scattering cross-section for a driven harmonically bound particle as a

function of the driving frequency

Review - Special Relativity

1. a consistent framework in which events in space-time are assigned
coordinates, but where the coordinates depend on the state of motion of
the observer. The fundamental quantities are points, or events, which
are vectors in a 4-dimensional space-time.
2. the velocity of propagation of light is independent of the frame of
reference of the observer or of the source - i.e. the speed of light, c is a
constant in all frames.

Lorentz Transformations

inverse
two frames K and K with relative
velocity, v along the x-axis

consequences of LTs

1. length contraction (Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction)

2. time dilation
3. transformation of velocities
4. doppler effect
5. proper time
1. length contraction:
ie., length appears shorter by a factor
2. time dilation:
the interval measured has increased by a factor , so that the moving
clock appears to have slowed down.

3. transformation of velocities (Beaming):

if a point has velocity u in frame K, what is its velocity u in frame K?

lorentz transformations for differentials:

and then:

the generalisation of these equations to an arbitrary velocity, v, can be stated

in terms of the components of u perpendicular to and parallel to v

the directions of the velocities in these two frames are related by the
aberation formula
where
for the case where u =c

THE ABERATION OF LIGHT

set, -=)/2 this means that a photon is emitted at right angles to v in K

for highly relativistic speeds

becomes small

if photons are emitted isotropically in K, then half

will have
and half
in frame K photons are
concentrated in the
forward direction with
half lying within a cone
of half-angle
very few photons emitted having
THE BEAMING EFFECT

4. doppler effect:
any periodic phenomenon in a moving frame will appear to have a
longer period by a factor when viewed by local observers in frame K.
if we measure arrival times of pulses of light there will be an
additional effect on the observed period due to the delay times for
light propagation.
DOPPLER EFFECT

DOPPLER EFFECT
if the frequency of the
radiation in the rest
frame of the source is
then the time taken to
move from point 1 to 2
in the observers frame
is given by timedilation effect:

in the rest frame of observer K a

moving source emits one period
of radiation as it moves from
point 1 to point 2 with velocity
v.

the difference in arrival times

of the
radiation emitted at 1 and 2 is equal to
minus the time taken for the radiation to
propagate distance, d .

thus the observed frequency:

relativistic doppler formula

note - classical doppler requires knowledge of the velocities of source
and observer relative to medium (say, air), but the relativistic
formula has no such dependence.
can also write it:

and the inverse:

5. proper time:
intervals of space and time have different values in different frames
of reference, but there are some quantities that are the same.
Lorentz invariant quantities
e.g.,

SPACE-TIME VOLUME ELEMENT

where

this is called proper time element between events differing by dx, dy,
dz in space and dt in time.
is left unchanged under lorentz transformations
measures time intervals between events occuring at the same spatial
location (dx=dy=dz) - ticks of a clock carried by an observer.
if the coordinate differentials refer to the position of the origin of
another reference frame travelling with velocity, v then:
the time dilation formula in which
is the time interval measured by the
observer in motion

another Lorentz invariant quantity is

MOMENTUM-SPACE VOLUME ELEMENT

is Lorentz invariant

This says that a boost will change both the energy of a collection of
particles and also the 3-momentum volume that they occupy, but the
combination above is invariant under boosts. This is very useful in
formulating the relativistic Boltzmann equation.