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Re: Is photon a wave packet ?



Barut et. al. get a classical formulation where the energy (E=h*nu) is
concentrated
in a small region of the space.

According to Einstein paper (1917), when one atom emits, a momentum on the
contrary
sense occur (like shooting a bullet). Remember that he considered this an
important conclusion
of his paper.

I feel that we do not have a clear reference to consider misconceptions in
other ideas.
We have a mathematical formalism, but there are "old" images in the bag and
some
people confront the formalism with that. There is no law to prohibit that.

I accept that I do not understand a classical idea, I can imagin italian
people eating spaghetti,
but I can not imagine ammonia molecule eating a "wave packet" of microwave
radiation.


Arnulfo Castellanos Moreno


----- Original Message -----
From: "William Beaty" <billb@ESKIMO.COM>
To: <PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, May 14, 2002 3:37 PM
Subject: Re: Is photon a wave packet ?


On Tue, 14 May 2002, Arnulfo Castellanos Moreno wrote:
They want to get a classical model of the photon by solving the wave
equation in
such way that it is satisfied by a wave packet represented with an
integral
where the kernel is the
solution to a Helmholtz equation.

You can disagree about that points of view, but they exist.

Does the above apply to all photons? I thought the original question
carried some hidden assumption:

Are (all) photons (actually) wave packets (rather than pointlike
particles)?

If an excited atom emits a single photon, isn't that photon associated
with a spherical wavetrain of dipole EM radiation? If a photon is
associated with a "packet", then that "packet" can take the form of an
expanding sphere of immense size, no? After each second of time passes,
the sphere radius grows by another 3e+8 meters.

Perhaps we're dealing with a physics misconception here. In the past I've
seen the authors of non-physics books state claim photons are not
pointlike, but instead are extended wave-packets. I imagine that they're
uncomfortable with the usual interpretations of QM. (How then can they
explain how a tiny ammonia molecule is able to completely absorb a
relatively enormous "wave packet" of microwave radiation?)


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