Giant Compton Shifts in Hyperbolic Metamaterial

TL;DR

This paper reveals that hyperbolic metamaterials can cause significantly larger Compton shifts and scattering enhancements due to their unique electromagnetic properties, with potential applications in infrared photonics.

Contribution

It introduces a universal approach to analyze multi-photon processes in nanostructured media and predicts giant Compton shifts in hyperbolic metamaterials.

Findings

Giant Compton shifts of a few meVs in the infrared spectrum.

Enhanced scattering cross section due to hyperbolic dispersion.

Universal spectral intensity function for realistic structures.

Abstract

We study the Compton scattering of light by free electrons inside a hyperbolic medium. We demonstrate that the unconventional dispersion and local density of states of the electromagnetic modes in such media can lead to a giant Compton shift and dramatic enhancement of the scattering cross section. We develop an universal approach for the study of coupled multi-photon processes in nanostructured media and derive the spectral intensity function of the scattered radiation for realistic metamaterial structures. We predict the Compton shift of the order of a few meVs for the infrared spectrum that is at least one order of magnitude larger than the Compton shift in any other system.