Recently, the paper titled A Brewster Route to Cherenkov detectors by Research Professor LIN Xiao’s group was reported online in Nature Communications.The research group is the first in the world to reveal the new working mechanism of broadband micro-nano Cherenkov detector based on brewster effect, which contributes to the development of the next generation of miniaturized and highly sensitive particle detector.

Figure 1：Schematic diagram of micro-Nano Cherenkov detector based on Brewster effect

Early in the last century, three former Soviet scientists (Cherenkov, Frank and Tamm) won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1958 for their experimental discovery of Cherenkov radiation and for revealing its radiation mechanism.The cherenkov detector is widely used in high-energy particle detection, and plays an important role in the discovery of many elementary particles (antiproton, J /ψ particle, neutrino oscillation, etc.).However, due to the limitation of the traditional Cherenkov radiation mechanism, the Cherenkov detector cannot use conventional transparent media.To solve this problem, Lin’s group has revealed a new mechanism that high-speed charged particles can generate equivalent Cherenkov radiation in the transit radiation resonance of photonic crystals [Nature Physics 14, 816 (2018)].This mechanism is expected to be used to design new micro Nanocherenkov detectors with artificial optical materials.However, the equivalent refractive index of metal-based metamaterials or photonic crystals based on conventional transparent media will periodically introduce dispersion due to the material or structure, which makes it difficult for the micro Nano Cherenkov detector to work in broadband, and the total photon energy of radiation is low, affecting device performance.

To address this challenge, Lin’ group further revealed a new working mechanism of broadband micro-Nano Cherenkov detector based on brewster effect, which will greatly improve the sensitivity and working bandwidth of the micro-nano Cherenkov detector.The research results are expected to provide theoretical guidance and a new research paradigm for the development of the next generation of miniaturized and highly sensitive Cherenkov detectors.

Figure 2：A new idea for designing the equivalent refractive index arbitrarily near one for Cherenkov radiation

Paper link：https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-25822-x

Lin's personal homepage:  https://person.zju.edu.cn/en/xiaolinGroup