Density of states effects on emission and scattering of photons in plasmas

Abstract

Abstract Plasma supports electromagnetic waves propagation for frequencies higher than plasma frequency but features dielectric permittivity less than 1. This property leads to photon density of states (DOS) lower than in vacuum and should result in subnatural spectral linewidths, sub-Planckian spectrum of thermal radiation, and sub-Rayleigh scattering as well as in lower inelastic photon scattering including Raman scattering. Lamb shift will be altered as well though the decisive contribution from high-energy modes in this case makes the photon DOS effect rather small since plasma DOS converges with the vacuum one in the limit of infinite frequencies. We emphasize the basic character of all these phenomena though absolute values of corrections in many real experiments may appear to be small as compared to other factors. We found that dissipative losses make possible DOS effects smaller though not vanishing and additionally bring about indefinite growth of DOS in the low-frequency limit.