Re: EM field of photon
- From: "Timo A. Nieminen" <timo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2007 22:45:55 +0000 (UTC)
On Tue, 11 Dec 2007, ilper@xxxxxx wrote:
Does a photon (free - plane wave or/and confined - a wave packet) has
an EM field.
How does it look like if one can measure it in space and
time?
How does it look? To the best resolution of our measurements, point-like
in both space and time - you only detect it on a single pixel of your
detector, at a single instant of time.
Does a photon have an EM field? This depends very much on what you mean
by "have". As a quantum object, surely a photon has a wavefunction, and
an EM field (or mode of an EM field) seems to work well as a
wavefunction for photons.
For a plane wave mode, you'll have E=0 and H=0 for a single photon,
since there is no localisation at all - the photon can be anywhere and
anywhen. For a wavepacket, non-zero fields (but beware of "confined", a
Gaussian wavepacket extends to infinity in space and time).
--
Timo Nieminen - Home page: http://www.physics.uq.edu.au/people/nieminen/
E-prints: http://eprint.uq.edu.au/view/person/Nieminen,_Timo_A..html
Shrine to Spirits: http://www.users.bigpond.com/timo_nieminen/spirits.html
.
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