☼
☼Ideas
Guest
Given: Imagine a fist-sized cube made of high quality 2-way mirrors where all reflective surfaces are on the inside (so that light passes easily into the cube).
Question: If a bright external light source is focused on a wall of the cube and maintained indefinitely, what happens to the photon density inside the cube? Would it keep increasing without limit?
My thoughts: The cube is a 'leaky' light trap. Imagine just a single photon passes into the cube. That photon has a certain probability of passing out of the cube every time it meets one of the internal reflective mirror surfaces, but a HIGHER probability of reflecting and remaining in the cube a while longer. Now, for a constant external light source, billions of photons are coming into the cube much faster than the internal photons can leak out, leading to a net increase of photon density. If this is true, something has got to give! Photon density surely can't increase towards infinity?
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Question: If a bright external light source is focused on a wall of the cube and maintained indefinitely, what happens to the photon density inside the cube? Would it keep increasing without limit?
My thoughts: The cube is a 'leaky' light trap. Imagine just a single photon passes into the cube. That photon has a certain probability of passing out of the cube every time it meets one of the internal reflective mirror surfaces, but a HIGHER probability of reflecting and remaining in the cube a while longer. Now, for a constant external light source, billions of photons are coming into the cube much faster than the internal photons can leak out, leading to a net increase of photon density. If this is true, something has got to give! Photon density surely can't increase towards infinity?
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