single photon through glass

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I'm trying to get a description of how an individual photon goes through
glass. It seems to require the full power of field theory. The setup
would be like the two slit experiment where a single photon at at time
is fired from an emitter and then recorded after passing through a lens.
The assumption is that the glass could still be transparent to an
individual photon. This is like in the two slit experiment where the
phonomenon still occurs when the light is sent one photon at a time.

If the passage is a sequence of absorptions and reemissions, then the
reemissions ought to be in random directions and the glass is not
transparent. It seems that the absorptions and reemissions must be
virtual. All possible routes, including the absorptions and reemissions,
get merged into a single field. The field then gives a probability of
the combination source-emission and recorder-absorption events.

This from Wikipedia: "In classical optics light travels over all allowed
paths, and their interference results in Fermat's principle. Similarly,
in QED, light (or any other particle like an electron or a proton)
passes over every possible path allowed by apertures or lenses."

The inclusion of "lenses" is what I'm interested in. In what way does a
lens enable or remove possible paths?

Is the photon at the detector considered the same photon as emitted (in
the same sense as light traveling in a vacuum)?

Does light travel through glass mostly because of a lack of absorptions?

Classically, the glass molecules are supposed to "resonate" to the
visible light. What does this mean with an individual photon?

Note: That light travels slower in glass is supposed to be derived, so I
want to avoid that easy shortcut. Also, the shortcut that this is in
the realm of classical EM shouldn't really be used because the context
is a single photon. The questions are directed toward a cleaner
understanding (in QED terms) of why light travels slower through glass.

Thanks in advance as always,
Ned Phipps

.

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