Optical Instabilities and Spontaneous Light Emission by Polarizable Moving Matter

Abstract

One of the most extraordinary manifestations of the coupling of the electromagnetic field and matter is the emission of light by charged particles passing through a dielectric medium: the Vavilov-Cherenkov effect. Here, we theoretically predict that a related phenomenon may be observed when neutral fast polarizable particles travel near a metal surface supporting surface plasmon polaritons. Based on a classical formalism, we find that at some critical velocity, even if the initial optical field is vanishingly small, the system may become unstable and may start spontaneously emitting light such that in some initial time window the electromagnetic field grows exponentially with time.