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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]
Photons or matter (like electrons) produce an interference pattern when two slits are used Light from a green laser passing through two slits 0.4 mm wide and 0.1 mm apart In modern physics , the double-slit experiment demonstrates that light and matter can exhibit behavior of both classical particles and classical waves .
Photons with high photon energy can transform in quantum mechanics to lepton and quark pairs, the latter fragmented subsequently to jets of hadrons, i.e. protons, pions, etc.At high energies E the lifetime t of such quantum fluctuations of mass M becomes nearly macroscopic: t ≈ E/M 2; this amounts to flight lengths as large as one micrometer for electron pairs in a 100 GeV photon beam, while ...
These photons were sufficiently energetic that they could react with each other to form pairs of electrons and positrons. Likewise, positron–electron pairs annihilated each other and emitted energetic photons: γ + γ ↔ e + + e −. An equilibrium between electrons, positrons and photons was maintained during this phase of the evolution of ...
Moreover, the energy of the emitted electrons will not depend on the intensity of the incoming light of a given frequency, but only on the energy of the individual photons. [4] While free electrons can absorb any energy when irradiated as long as this is followed by an immediate re-emission, like in the Compton effect, in quantum systems all of ...
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.
This is the basic approach of QED. To calculate the probability of any interactive process between electrons and photons, it is a matter of first noting, with Feynman diagrams, all the possible ways in which the process can be constructed from the three basic elements. Each diagram involves some calculation involving definite rules to find the ...
Photons have the largest range of energy and central in a variety of energy conversions. Photons interact with electric and magnetic entities. For example, electric dipole which in turn are excited by optical phonons or fluid particle vibration, or transition dipole moments of electronic transitions.