- #1
dmayers94
- 16
- 0
I read that Cerenkov radiation is caused by charged particles traveling faster than the speed of light in the medium, but I don't understand why. I have seen analogies to a plane moving a supersonic speed creating a cone of sound waves because the waves can't keep up with the plane, but in this case the sound waves already exist even without the plane traveling faster than the speed of sound. Charged particles don't emit radiation traveling at constant speeds unless traveling faster than the speed of light, so why do they do this if they don't emit any light to begin with when traveling at slower speeds? Does a build up of electromagnetic disturbances somehow create the photons?