Particle motion in rapidly oscillating potentials: The role of the potential's initial phase
- Department of Physics of Complex Systems, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100 (Israel)
Rapidly oscillating potentials with a vanishing time average have been used for a long time to trap charged particles in source-free regions. It has been argued that the motion of a particle inside such a potential can be approximately described by a time independent effective potential, which does not depend upon the initial phase of the oscillating potential. However, here we show that the motion of a particle and its trapping condition significantly depend upon this initial phase for arbitrarily high frequencies of the potential's oscillation. We explain this phenomenon by showing that the motion of a particle is determined by the effective potential stated in the literature only if its initial conditions are transformed according to a transformation which we show to significantly depend on the potential's initial phase for arbitrarily high frequencies. We confirm our theoretical findings by numerical simulations. Further, we demonstrate that the found phenomenon offers different ways to manipulate the dynamics of particles which are trapped by rapidly oscillating potentials. Finally, we propose a simple experiment to verify the theoretical findings of this work.
- OSTI ID:
- 21011268
- Journal Information:
- Physical Review. A, Vol. 76, Issue 1; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.76.013421; (c) 2007 The American Physical Society; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1050-2947
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Challenges at the Frontiers of Matter and Energy: Transformative Opportunities for Discovery Science
Phase-field investigation on the non-equilibrium interface dynamics of rapid alloy solidification