Timeline for How can we interpret polarization and frequency when we are dealing with one single photon?
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14 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Oct 10, 2014 at 17:57 | comment | added | HolgerFiedler | Perhaps this helps: physics.stackexchange.com/questions/114859 | |
| Sep 29, 2013 at 19:19 | comment | added | user4552 | @Nathaniel: Fair enough. I guess it depends on the extent to which you buy operationalism as a philosophical position: plato.stanford.edu/entries/operationalism . I tend toward operationalism, although it does have its limitations, e.g., it says you can't really talk about an electron's wavefunction, which we clearly want to do. | |
| Sep 29, 2013 at 10:37 | comment | added | N. Virgo | @BenCrowell sure, we can measure those things, but that doesn't necessarily tell us how to interpret their meaning. The question of "what's oscillating" for a single photon seems a very reasonable and well-defined one to me. | |
| Sep 29, 2013 at 6:17 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/#!/StackPhysics/status/384200132205752320 | ||
| Sep 29, 2013 at 2:44 | answer | added | Selene Routley | timeline score: 21 | |
| Sep 29, 2013 at 2:25 | answer | added | user26165 | timeline score: 0 | |
| Sep 29, 2013 at 0:53 | answer | added | anna v | timeline score: 6 | |
| Sep 29, 2013 at 0:40 | comment | added | user4552 | Do you mean that ... No, I'm just saying that your question is vague and I can't tell what you're asking. In that case, what would be the amplitude... This seems like a separate question, but anyway you could estimate the amplitude if you knew the volume occupied by the wavetrain. Equate the energy of the photon to the energy of a classical EM wave occupying that volume, and solve for the amplitude. | |
| Sep 29, 2013 at 0:37 | comment | added | Phyllipe | In that case, what would be the amplitude of that oscillation? I mean, what physical variable would be associated with that amplitude? | |
| Sep 29, 2013 at 0:14 | comment | added | Phyllipe | Do you mean that a single photon is linearly polarized when it oscillates forming a straight line and the frequency of this oscillation is that of the electromagnetic wave? | |
| Sep 29, 2013 at 0:09 | review | First posts | |||
| Sep 29, 2013 at 0:16 | |||||
| Sep 29, 2013 at 0:08 | comment | added | user4552 | This is pretty vague. Why do you think they're difficult to interpret? We have devices that can detect individual photons, and filters that can filter photons based on polarization and frequency, so it seems clear to me that these concepts are well founded for a single photon. What we don't have in the case of a single photon is a sharply defined phase or classically measurable E and B fields. | |
| Sep 28, 2013 at 23:58 | history | edited | Phyllipe | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Translation fixed
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| Sep 28, 2013 at 23:52 | history | asked | Phyllipe | CC BY-SA 3.0 |