Timeline for Can't make a good mental picture of the electric and magnetic fields of a single moving photon
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
15 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| S Jul 6, 2021 at 18:51 | history | suggested | Tyberius | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added image into post to avoid link rot. Image is in public domain, so no licensing issues
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| Jul 6, 2021 at 18:38 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Jul 6, 2021 at 18:51 | |||||
| Jul 6, 2021 at 14:23 | comment | added | dionysus | Let us continue this discussion in chat. | |
| Jul 6, 2021 at 5:16 | comment | added | GiorgioP-DoomsdayClockIsAt-90 | @dionysus I would add that you shouldn't be discouraged by the complexity of the photon concept. Indeed, it is quite a sophisticated concept, but it can be mastered by studying physics step by step. Unfortunately, popsci has the tendency to present complex concepts in an apparently familiar way, at the risk of paving the way to misconceptions. | |
| Jul 6, 2021 at 5:11 | comment | added | GiorgioP-DoomsdayClockIsAt-90 | @dionysus That's the point! Photons and em fields are different although related concepts. However, the relation is not that a photon is just a bunch of localized em fields. It is more subtle. Photons can be thought of as the elementary microscopic constituents of what we call em fields at the macroscopic level. Em fields emerge as the collective behavior of a macroscopic number of photons. There is nothing like the em fields associated with a single photon. Many photons are the em fields. | |
| Jul 6, 2021 at 2:25 | comment | added | dionysus | Giorgio, are you implying that photons and electromagnetic waves are different concepts, and should not be mixed? | |
| Jul 6, 2021 at 2:23 | comment | added | dionysus | vibrate in thin slices as shown in the picture? Do the slices have any "thickness"? Also, how does the amplitude of E and B fade out as one moves away from the location of photon along x axis? | |
| Jul 6, 2021 at 2:20 | comment | added | dionysus | I must say, the answers have left me more confused than before. Just to clarify, my question relates to a single photon. Imagine a single, lone-wolf sort of photon blazing through deep space at light speed (pun intended). Now, I understand that quantum physics introduces an element of uncertainty over the position and momentum of the photon. However I believe we still have a sense of the direction of the movement of photon, isn't it? (correct me if I am wrong, please). So, if the photon is traveling in +ve x direction as shown in my picture, does its electric and magnetic fields... (continued) | |
| Jul 6, 2021 at 2:12 | comment | added | dionysus | Thanks all for your answers. I am a novice to higher physics, and just testing my understanding of foundational concepts, just to see if I have any potential to pursue this line of study. | |
| Jul 5, 2021 at 22:34 | comment | added | GiorgioP-DoomsdayClockIsAt-90 | @dionysus I have added a link to a picture providing a representation of the field of a linear polarized plane wave. | |
| Jul 5, 2021 at 22:33 | history | edited | GiorgioP-DoomsdayClockIsAt-90 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Added link to a picture of the 3D field in a linerly polarized plane wave.
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| Jul 5, 2021 at 22:05 | comment | added | Ben51 | @dionysus No, E field is uniform in y direction and B is uniform in z direction. | |
| Jul 5, 2021 at 21:42 | comment | added | dionysus | <quote> " Vectors E and B are the same in every plane perpendicular to the x−axis, at every distance from the x−axis " - Giorgio, so are you saying that E and B move out in concentric circles from origin, like the ripples on the surface of water? | |
| Jul 5, 2021 at 21:33 | comment | added | Chiral Anomaly | Good answer! Defining a "phase" observable can be tricky, but we can avoid that issue by saying it like this: The number-of-photons observable does not commute with the electric or magnetic field observables, so a photon cannot have well-defined values of the EM fields. | |
| Jul 5, 2021 at 21:19 | history | answered | GiorgioP-DoomsdayClockIsAt-90 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |