Light ring

[Zolar V]

So I was contemplating the consequences of no saturation point to energy within a given space. I eventually came up with a small way to capture photons from light and keep them.

 

Basically I thought of a toroid design that on the inside consists of mirrors to reflect the photons all along the ring. The entrance for the photons to get in would be a one way mirror on the top that hits a 1 way mirror below the inside tube that reflects it at an angle into the torus. Of course energy is lost due to heat and such so encompass the torus with another torus, and create a vacuum between the two. Also because of the heat concept you could build test probes in the vacuum to extract the amount of heat is lost, and the probable amount of heat inside the light ring.

 

 

Figure 1.

 

torus ring

__________________=_____________

 

inner ring

_______________=__=_____________

………………………|____++/ small box to bounce the light from the entrance to the inner ring.

 

= equals a one way mirror

+ = an angular mirror

 

 

 

 

Figure 2.

 

 

 

{*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-=---*-----*-----*-----*-----*}

{++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++}

[---------------------------------=------------------------------]

[---------------------------------=------------------------------]

{++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++}

{*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*}

 

 

+ denotes vacuum

[] {} = indicates bounds of the respective tors

= equals mirrors and such from figure 1

* = temperature sensors

[Mr Skeptic]

There's no such thing as a one-way mirror. They are half-silvered mirrors which let about half the light through, both ways. Whoever is on the darker side can see what is on the lighter side, whereas whoever is on the lighter side gets blinded by the bright reflection. Think of it like trying to peer into a dark hole, but the hole is darker because half the light that would enter from the bright place you are instead gets overlayed over the dark hole.

[Zolar V]

There's no such thing as a one-way mirror. They are half-silvered mirrors which let about half the light through, both ways. Whoever is on the darker side can see what is on the lighter side, whereas whoever is on the lighter side gets blinded by the bright reflection. Think of it like trying to peer into a dark hole, but the hole is darker because half the light that would enter from the bright place you are instead gets overlayed over the dark hole.

 

So there is no net photon gain within the torus?

 

I might need to check out the maths behind this, i would like to calculate how much light gets in from the outside source, then calculate how much light excapes each time it completes a circle within the torus.

[^_^]

There aren't perfectly reflecting mirrors, and even if there were you're going to have to hold the cavity perfectly stable, which would require it to sit at 0 K.

 

And lets say you could, as you increased the energy in the cavity, eventually the electric field would destroy the mirrors.

[John Cuthber]

A couple of things.

You might want to look at this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavity_ring-down_spectroscopy

The geometry is a bit different but the maths is similar.

 

If you could do this trick, what would you have achieved?

[swansont]

So there is no net photon gain within the torus?

 

I might need to check out the maths behind this, i would like to calculate how much light gets in from the outside source, then calculate how much light excapes each time it completes a circle within the torus.

 

Gain? No, not unless you put a gain element inside. Then you'd have a ring laser.

 

But you can have more power inside the torus than outside, by putting a highly reflective mirror in place. The input coupling would be weak, but the photons would stay inside for many reflections. What you describe is basically a power build-up cavity using a ring resonator.