How do photons move in waves?

In energy wave theory, a photon is generated by the vibration of particles, traveling perpendicular to the direction of vibration. These are the two components of the wave (longitudinal and transverse). Longitudinal waves constantly flow from particles, causing an electric field even when a particle is not in motion.

What causes a photon to move?

A photon is a pulse of an electric field which when it collapses produces a magnetic field which when it collapses produces an electric field and so on and on until either the electric field and/or the magnetic field is absorbed by something. In other words the photon propagates itself thus moving away from the source.

Do photons travel in a spiral?

Ordinarily, light does not spiral. To cause spiral, you need a strange object called an optical vortex beam. To understand the beam, we should first take a step back and consider waves. This traveling line is the “wavefront” of the wave.

How do photons carry electromagnetic force?

The particles that carry that force, called photons, act like love notes. They draw the protons and electrons together. When two electrons, which both have a negative charge, communicate through electromagnetism, the photons act more like hate mail. They push the electrons apart.

Does a photon move in a straight line?

Photons do not travel in straight lines. Quantum particles do not have trajectories as classical particles do. Photons do not propagate in all directions as a spherical wave does. Photons are not waves.

Can a photon stop moving?

No, it is not possible to stop a photon. Photons are always moving. They have a constant total energy and kinetic energy of ( p c ). The rest mass of photons is always zero which means they have zero rest energy.

Do photons have dimension?

So an elementary particle, including the photon, has a size measurement due to the particular interaction possibilities when scattering or being scattered by other elementary particles. A variable size measurement which depends on the energy transfers of the collisions. It is still of dimension zero.

Does a photon have electromagnetic force?

22.2. Photons do not experience the electromagnetic force themselves, and so they do not interact with each other, but the effects of electromagnetism are produced by the energy and momentum they carry. The photons that carry force are known as ‘virtual’ particles.

Do photons carry electromagnetic waves?

Hence, light is an electromagnetic wave. Light consists of photons; and thus each photon carries a unit of energy. This behavior is demonstrated by the photoelectric and Compton effects. Since light is an electromagnetic energy, photons must also carry electromagnetic field and a unit of it.

What do you call the straight line paths that photon take to go from one place to another?

Many Paths If a photon has to travel from point A to point B it will travel in a straight line and loop the loop and go via Alpha Centauri and take every other possible path. This is the photon’s so-called ‘quantum state’. It is spread out across all space.

What is the wave function of a single photon?

$\\endgroup$. $\\begingroup$ You can also say that the wavefunction of a photon is defined as long as the photon is not emitted or absorbed. The wavefunction of a single photons is used in single-photon interferometry, for example.

How can a single photon be described quantum mechanically?

A single photon is described quantum mechanically by the Maxwell equations, where the solutions are taken to be complex.

Why are photons never non-relativistic?

The reason is that photons are never non-relativistic and they can be freely emitted and absorbed, hence no photon number conservation. Still, there exists a direction of research where people try to reinterpret certain quantities of electromagnetic field in terms of the photon wave function, see for example this paper.

What is the helicity of a single photon in position space?

According to Wigner’s analysis, the single photon Hilbert space is spanned by a basis parameterized by energy-momenta on the forward light cone boundary, and a helicity of ± 1. However, a manifestly Lorentz covariant description in position space has to include a fictitious longitudinal photon with a helicity of 0.