Re: Is photon a wave packet ?

[Arnulfo Castellanos Moreno <acastell@FISICA.USON.MX>]

Photon is a good concept when radiation interacts with atoms.
To consider propagation, waves are better. This characteristic
is maintained when they are together in the formalism of quantum
electrodynamics.

Is like a good breakfast: sugar in the coffee and salt in the
eggs.

We do not have a concept to put together, in a different sense,
wave-like and particle-like behavior of radiation.
Abraham Pais, in "Subtle is the Lord", tell us how Einstein tried to
imagine a new concept about that, but he did not reach it.

Apparently, Einstein wanted a field theory, with a generalized
metric, where gravitation and electromagnetism were unified.
There, particles could be like concentrations of the field.

Arnulfo Castellanos-Moreno


----- Original Message -----
From: "William Beaty" <billb@ESKIMO.COM>
To: <PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu>
Sent: Thursday, May 16, 2002 8:54 AM
Subject: Re: Is photon a wave packet ?


> On Thu, 16 May 2002, Michael Edmiston wrote:
>
> > (2) I don't understand how to make the two ideas congruent that (a) a
photon
> > doesn't have spatial existence and (b) a photon has a velocity and
"arrives"
> > at some point at a time later than when it was created.
>
> Do photons "have" velocity, any more than they "have" wavelength?  I
> thought it was the waves in the EM field which travelled at c, not the
> photons.
>
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