EM wave interaction with an antenna has been covered, e.g.: How do we visualise antenna reception of individual radiowave photons building up to a resonant AC current on the antenna? Most answers focus on antenna atoms individually absorbing a photon's energy. But photons have oscillating EM fields. When light passes through water it loses velocity (but not energy we are told) because of the interaction of photon EM fields with electron electric fields. Might this play any role in the interaction of radio waves with a metal antenna? Can the photon EM oscillation induce its frequency on the antenna's delocalized valence electrons? Does the antenna absorb EM energy this way and then re-radiate so there is no net loss to the original EM field (but if the antenna heats up there is loss...). ************************* My antenna example/question introduces too many (conduction) interactions. My real interest centered on the reduced velocity of the photon in glass or water? Is that absorption and reemission as HF suggests? Or does the photon's electric field interact with electron charge in the medium?
anna v writes: " there is nothing oscillating in the photon except the quantum mechanical probability of detecting it. A photon just has energy, spin and momentum. The energy of the photon is E=hν where ν is the frequency...." To characterize photon energy as an inert, quiescent, non-oscillatory quantity is to embrace the original concept of kinetic energy (Coriolis, Watt, Lord Kelvin) from the mid-19th century! Have we come no further? Physicists will make the photon into whatever is convenient for the question at hand, particle, field or mathematical operator. In fact, the photon – no mass, no trajectory - is a 'particle' only by analogy: it terminates at a point with momentum.