Seminar of Dr. Michael Scalora

Reevaluation of radiation reaction and consequences for light-matter interactions at nanoscale:

In the context of electromagnetism and nonlinear optical interactions damping is
generally introduced as a phenomenological, viscous term that dissipates energy, proportional to
the temporal derivative of the polarization. Here, we follow the radiation reaction method
presented in [G. W. Ford and R. F. O'Connell, Phys. Lett. A, 157, 217 (1991)], which applies
to non-relativistic electrons of finite size, to introduce an explicit reaction force in the
Newtonian equation of motion, and derive a hydrodynamic equation that offers new insight
on the influence of damping in generic plasmas, metal-based and/or dielectric structures. In
these settings, we find new damping-dependent linear and nonlinear source terms that suggest
the damping coefficient is proportional to the local charge density, and nonlocal contributions
that stem from the spatial derivative of the magnetic field that under the right conditions could
modify both linear and nonlinear responses.

Dr. Michael Scalora
Charles M. Bowden Research Center, AMRDEC, RDECOM, Redstone Arsenal, AL 35898-5000 - U.S.A.