View Single Post
  #3 (permalink)  
Old 20-July-2007, 08:18 PM
papageno's Avatar
papageno papageno is offline
Order of Kilopi
 
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Greater London
Posts: 3,379
Send a message via MSN to papageno
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by papageno View Post
Unfortunately, 10-13 m is about two orders of magnitude smaller than the spacing of atoms in a crystal. So, you have the problem of finding a periodic structure which has a periodicity of the order of the wavelength.

At first glance you would need to pack charged particles much closer than the average distance between an electron and the nucleus in an atom (well, there is a reason why gamma radiation is linked to nuclear reactions).
It occurred to me that you could use muons instead of electrons.
Muons are about 200 times heavier than electrons, and therefore the corresponding Bohr radius would be about 2.5 x 10-13 m, which is just right for your 2 MeV gamma photons.

Unfortunately, muons have a finite lifetime, and I do not know whether putting them into a crystal would make them stable.
__________________
papageno


"Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" - Hobbes (Calvin and Hobbes)

"It's all about context!" - Vince Noir (The Mighty Boosh)

"I've never heard of such a brutal and shocking injustice that I cared so little about!" - Zapp Brannigan (Futurama)

"...because the logic of the lines traced from reality is as poor of aesthetic value as it is strict in consistency. " - Paolo Bozzi (Naive Physics - free translation)
Reply With Quote