The Nature of Light: What Is a Photon?

ISBN-13: 9780367387105 / Angielski / Miękka / 2019 / 452 str.

Chandra Roychoudhuri; A. F. Kracklauer; Kathy Creath

Opis

Gathering contributions from globally recognized specialists in electrodynamics and quantum optics, this volume continues the debate on the definition of a photon and the concept of wave-particle duality. After covering the mainstream view of the nature of light and photons, it presents a new and challenging scientific epistemology that explains how to overcome the prevailing paradoxes and confusions arising from the accepted definition of a photon as a monochromatic Fourier mode of the vacuum. It concludes with an array of experiments that demonstrate the innovative thinking needed to examine the wave-particle duality of photons.

Spis treści

Light Reconsidered. What Is a Photon?. What Is a Photon?. The Concept of the Photon—Revisited. A Photon Viewed from Wigner Phase Space. Inevitable Incompleteness of All Theories: An Epistemology to Continuously Refine Human Logics Toward Cosmic Logics. “Single Photons” Have Not Been Detected: The Alternative “Photon Clump” Model. What Is a Photon?. Oh Photon, Photon, Whither Art Thou Gone?. A Conclusive Experiment on Wave-Particle Duality of Light?. The Photon Wave Function. Photons Are Fluctuations of a Random (Zeropoint) Radiation Filling the Whole Space. Violation of the Principle of Complementarity and Its Implications. The Bohr Model of the Photon. The Maxwell Wave Function of the Photon. Modeling Light Entangled in Polarization and Frequency: Case Study in Quantum Cryptography. Photon–The Minimum Dose of Electromagnetic Radiation. Propagating Topological Singularities: Photons. The Photon: A Virtual Reality. The Photon and Its Measurability. Phase Coherence in Multiple Scattering: Weak and Intense Monochromatic Light Wave Propagating in Cold Strontium Cloud. The Nature of Light: Description of Photon Diffraction Based upon Virtual Particle Exchange. What Physics Is Encoded in Maxwell’s Equations?. From Quantum to Classical: Watching a Single Photon Become a Wave. If Superposed Light Beams Do Not Redistribute Their Energy in the Absence of Detectors (Material Dipoles), Can a Single Indivisible Photon Interfere?. What Processes Are behind Energy Redirection and Redistribution in Interference and Diffraction?. Do We Count Indivisible Photons or Discrete Quantum Events Experienced by Detectors?. Direct Measurement of Light Waves. Index.

O autorze

Chandrasekhar Roychoudhuri, A. F. Kracklauer, Katherine Creath