Plasmon
Plasmón
- Date
- 1952 · confidence high
- Place
- Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, United States
- Credited to
- David Pines and David Bohm
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
Pines and Bohm proposed the plasmon as a quasiparticle quantizing the collective oscillations of the electron gas in a metal, analogous to the photon for light; it explains why metals reflect visible light yet become transparent at higher frequencies.
What it led to
- Understanding of the optical properties of metals and semiconductors
- Later birth of the field of plasmonics
- Applications in molecular sensing, lithography and photovoltaics