Abstract

The interaction between swift charged particles and the electronic surface modes of a cylindrical cavity is described according to classical and quantum-mechanical formulations. We perform a quantization of the collective modes and obtain expressions for the coupling with external probes moving with arbitrary trajectories. We study the case of particles moving parallel to the channel axis and derive the probabilities of single and multiple plasmon excitation and the average energy loss. A correspondence between the classical and quantum pictures is shown. The scaling properties of the interaction terms are studied and general scaling functions are obtained, which may be applied to a wide range of particle velocities and cavity sizes, including microcapillaries and nanotubes.