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Photons are massless particles that can move no faster than the speed of light measured in vacuum. The photon belongs to the class of boson particles. As with other elementary particles, photons are best explained by quantum mechanics and exhibit wave–particle duality, their behavior featuring properties of both waves and particles. [2]
In the late 17th century, Sir Isaac Newton had advocated that light was corpuscular (particulate), but Christiaan Huygens took an opposing wave description. While Newton had favored a particle approach, he was the first to attempt to reconcile both wave and particle theories of light, and the only one in his time to consider both, thereby anticipating modern wave-particle duality.
Like all elementary particles, electrons exhibit properties of both particles and waves: They can collide with other particles and can be diffracted like light. The wave properties of electrons are easier to observe with experiments than those of other particles like neutrons and protons because electrons have a lower mass and hence a longer de ...
As a wave, light is characterized by a velocity (the speed of light), wavelength, and frequency. As particles, light is a stream of photons. Each has an energy related to the frequency of the wave given by Planck's relation E = hf, where E is the energy of the photon, h is the Planck constant, 6.626 × 10 −34 J·s, and f is the frequency of ...
The wave–particle duality has been shown to apply not only to photons but to more massive particles as well. [6] Interactions of particles in the framework of quantum field theory are understood as creation and annihilation of quanta of corresponding fundamental interactions. This blends particle physics with field theory.
In 1905, Albert Einstein explained this effect by introducing the concept of light quanta or photons. Quantum particles are considered to have wave–particle duality. In quantum field theory, photons are explained as excitations of the electromagnetic field using second quantization.
As the photons entered the cloud, their energy excited atoms along their path, causing them to lose speed. Inside the cloud medium, the photons dispersively coupled to strongly interacting atoms in highly excited Rydberg states. This caused the photons to behave as massive particles with strong mutual attraction (photon molecules).
The experiment belongs to a general class of "double path" experiments, in which a wave is split into two separate waves (the wave is typically made of many photons and better referred to as a wave front, not to be confused with the wave properties of the individual photon) that later combine into a single wave.