can you use interference to make cosmic rays?

[Onceler]

like two beams of light being the same frequency but out of phase by 180 degrees so that there are twice the number of valleys in the signal

 

[Gibsons]

From wiki

Cosmic rays are energetic particles originating from space that impinge on Earth's atmosphere. Almost 90% of all the incoming cosmic ray particles are protons, about 9% are helium nuclei (alpha particles) and about 1% are electrons (beta minus particles). The term "ray" is a misnomer, as cosmic particles arrive individually, not in the form of a ray or beam of particles.

Pretty difficult to make a proton out of photons.

 

[mpilchfamily]

Shouldn't this be in the Highly Technical Forum?

 

[waldocat]

I think you mean high frequency radiation, cosmic rays are atomic particles.

If the phase difference were of 180 degrees then you would have destructive interference which means no light.
I suppose you mean the two sources are in phase, in this case you would end with the biggest amplitude possible but you could not change the wave length or frequency unless you change medium.

 

[waldocat]

Sorry I posted the same thing twice, don't know how to delete this.

 

[Born2bwire]

Originally posted by: waldocat
I think you mean high frequency radiation, cosmic rays are atomic particles.

If the phase difference were of 180 degrees then you would have destructive interference which means no light.
I suppose you mean the two sources are in phase, in this case you would end with the biggest amplitude possible but you could not change the wave length or frequency unless you change medium.

In the classical sense though, even changing the medium is generally not going to change the frequency (the exception perhaps is from dispersive mediums, but this has to do with temperal smearing as opposed to shifting of the frequency content). The speed of propagation changes which results in a corresponding change in the wavelength but the frequency stays the same. Quantum mechanically, I an only see a frequency change occuring due to absorption and subsequent stimulated emission. A decrease in frequency will arise if the atom is left in an excited state, and increase if the atom was in an excited state and fell to a lower energy state after emission. Increasing in frequency in this manner is probably not sustainable since you have to inject more energy to bring the atoms in the medium back up to an excited state.

 

[waldocat]

Originally posted by: Born2bwire

Originally posted by: waldocat
I think you mean high frequency radiation, cosmic rays are atomic particles.

If the phase difference were of 180 degrees then you would have destructive interference which means no light.
I suppose you mean the two sources are in phase, in this case you would end with the biggest amplitude possible but you could not change the wave length or frequency unless you change medium.

In the classical sense though, even changing the medium is generally not going to change the frequency (the exception perhaps is from dispersive mediums, but this has to do with temperal smearing as opposed to shifting of the frequency content). The speed of propagation changes which results in a corresponding change in the wavelength but the frequency stays the same. Quantum mechanically, I an only see a frequency change occuring due to absorption and subsequent stimulated emission. A decrease in frequency will arise if the atom is left in an excited state, and increase if the atom was in an excited state and fell to a lower energy state after emission. Increasing in frequency in this manner is probably not sustainable since you have to inject more energy to bring the atoms in the medium back up to an excited state.

You're right frequency would not change in the classical conception, only wavelength would.

 

[Biftheunderstudy]

You may be thinking of cosmic gamma rays, these are gamma rays with similar energies to cosmic rays, typically around a TeV. Look up Air-Cerenkov detectors for some neat info.
As was alluded to above, adding to light waves that are in phase does not change the energy per photon, only the amplitude of the wave. To change the energy you would need to increase the frequency of the radiation.
A simple example is a laser, a laser has nearly perfect 'phase coherence' meaning that almost all the photons or light waves are in phase with each other. This is (one of the reasons) why lasers are so highly collimated and the same frequency to a very high degree.

 

[Onceler]

your right 180 is cancelling,I meant to say 90 degrees out of sync you can do it with RF
forget about cosmic rays,is it possible to do this with light?

 

[waldocat]

To do what? Increase your initial frequency by interfering two coherent (but out of phase) waves ? You would not be able to that.

 

[Onceler]

Originally posted by: waldocat
To do what? Increase your initial frequency by interfering two coherent (but out of phase) waves ? You would not be able to that.

ok thats what I was wondering

 

[Born2bwire]

Originally posted by: Onceler
your right 180 is cancelling,I meant to say 90 degrees out of sync you can do it with RF
forget about cosmic rays,is it possible to do this with light?

You can't do it with RF either, besides, RF is the same as light.

 

[Onceler]

you can do it with RF if you feed it to a transistor it amplifies them as if they were one wave

 

[PottedMeat]

Originally posted by: Onceler
you can do it with RF if you feed it to a transistor it amplifies them as if they were one wave

What? You mean a mixer where output = sin(x)*sin(y) = sum & difference frequencies?

You can get green laser light (~530nm) from an infrared source (~1060nm) because of nonlinear effects in certain crystals.

 

[Born2bwire]

Originally posted by: Onceler
you can do it with RF if you feed it to a transistor it amplifies them as if they were one wave

But it is not doing it by intereference, it is doing this via active modulation as Potted Meat stated. Like I said earlier, you can increase the frequency of a wave, but you generally have to do it via active methods by having something akin to stimulated emission while injecting energy into the system. But all of this is cannot be done by simple passive inteference as you had originally posited.