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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]
While electrons were thought to be particles until their wave properties were discovered; for photons it was the opposite. In 1887, Heinrich Hertz observed that when light with sufficient frequency hits a metallic surface, the surface emits cathode rays, what are now called electrons.
The quantization of the electromagnetic field is a procedure in physics turning Maxwell's classical electromagnetic waves into particles called photons. Photons are massless particles of definite energy, definite momentum, and definite spin. To explain the photoelectric effect, Albert Einstein assumed heuristically in 1905 that an ...
Like all types of electromagnetic radiation, visible light propagates by massless elementary particles called photons that represents the quanta of electromagnetic field, and can be analyzed as both waves and particles. The study of light, known as optics, is an important research area in modern physics.
Wave-like behavior of matter has been experimentally demonstrated, first for electrons in 1927 and for other elementary particles, neutral atoms and molecules in the years since. Matter waves have more complex velocity relations than solid objects and they also differ from electromagnetic waves (light).
The wave-particle debate was rekindled in 1901 when Max Planck discovered that light is absorbed only in discrete "quanta", now called photons, implying that light has a particle nature. This idea was made explicit by Albert Einstein in 1905, but never accepted by Planck and many other contemporaries.
Experiments show that light could behave like a stream of particles (called photons) as well as exhibiting wave-like properties. This led to the concept of wave–particle duality to reflect that quantum-scale particles behave both like particles and like waves; they are occasionally called wavicles to reflect this. [4]
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.