Photons Definition and 1000 Threads

Quick question: photons do not interact with other photons photons do interact with electrons photons do interact with protons (I think) so do they intereact with neutrons? How could you tell, if the energy state of the neutron changed from absorbing a photon?

imagine a photon (travelling with the speed of light) is moving straight towards a huge mass say 10^10 Msun. what will happen to its speed/energy as it comes closer to it?

Suppose I had some plasma in box with walls that allowed nothing thru, photons, plasma, energy. Now heat the plasma and maintain some temperature T (ignore the difficulty in heating the plasma with the above walls, just assume you can). An approximation to this might be some small region of the...

Locally, photons "blue-shift" when falling down a gravitational field. What happens when they arrive at the Planck frequency? Do they turn back into matter?

I have noticed in the past that light travels through water relatively undisturbed (I have noticed that there seems to be some small amount of light reflected, but most seems to pass directly through). How does this happen, in terms of photons encountering particles? I once thought that...

Faster than light (FTL) is not possible via entanglement because you need to compare both the photons... or in other words entanglement is a single system that is "spread out" (across time-space) , the two photon pair behaves as a single system in which the two photons are within that system...

I'm not a physicist, I'm only taking my first subject on physics in Eng. here in Buenos aires, so I don't know much about it. But i find it so interesting that I spend some deep hours of thought ofently in it, and i just want to clarify this concern: According to relativity your local time...

Estimate how many photons of visible light (500 nm) are emitted by a 100 W Bulb. I get 2.5\times10^{20} Photons/Second Am I correct? Thank you. EDIT: Added units.

Hello, I am a student in Physics and I have some problems to understand how photons and electrons are studied. Is there the assumption that they occupy a so little space in the "Phase space" that they can be considered has point ? Can we expect that in the real case when they "moove" they are...

The path of photons can be (almost) reconstructed in a double slit experiment! Observing the Average Trajectories of Single Photons in a Two-Slit Interferometer http://www.sciencemag.org/content/332/6034/1170.abstract Discussion: http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/46193...

Hi, Why do photons come in quanta? Why are the quanta not bigger or smaller or continuous? Thanks, Anna.

I have long been puzzled by the whole idea of delayed choice experiments with photons. In a photon's frame of reference there is no distance traveled between emission and absorption; the distance has contracted (Lorentz-Fitzgerald) to zero. More relevantly there is no time duration either...

How do I entangle photons? INSTRUCTIONS PLS! I know this question was already asked on the site. But I am wording this differently. I do not want the process of entanglement explained to me. I want instructions on how to do it. Is it even possible without a lab? I have mirrors for oscillation...

the energy output of a star is such at the surface of the Earth it provides 5x10^-19 WM^-2 in the visible part of the spectrum... how many photons are collected per second by a 500mm diameter telescope? i don't know if there's any definite formula to drive the answer...but i tried this way...

Greetings, I know that when an electron in an atom emits or absorbs a photon, what changes is the electrons orbit. What about free electrons? If an electrons moving freely through space emits or absorbs an electron, what changes about the electron? And what determines what frequency...

Greetings, As much as I know about science, sometimes something very fundamental dawns on me that I do not understand. I thought all photons were emitted by electrons. Having recently been pursuing interest in radio communication, I realized I do not understand how an antenna produces a...

How many gamma photons are in the galaxy, and what can we know about the distribution? Which kind of process can absorb them?

According to Einstein's theory of general relativity, light bends--or rather space bends--around mass. So, in theory, is it possible for a photon to orbit around a body of sufficiently large mass?

Cant we shoot a photon thorough a polarizer without having the polarizer interact with it ? Like all the ones polarized perpendicular to it will get blocked but the ones lined up will go through. But if the particle is not in a polarized state until we measure then how does this work?

Is there any quantitative relationship between luminous intensity of monochromatic light and flux of photons(number of photons/(area*second)) ?

Homework Statement a handheld gaming device has 120 pixels per inch on its 2X3 in screen and uses a 5V, 7 watt*hour battery to power it. if each pixel is lit by a photon that is emitted from one electron flowing across the diode, will it last the whole week if you play it just in physics...

Is it possible to impart heat to a cloud of protons via EM radiation? Photons usually interact with electrons, and I can't find much info on pure photon-proton interaction. Also, if you took some hydrogen ions (protons, to be specific), could you form a state of matter, such as a liquid...

Homework Statement Summer has arrived and you decide to go to the tanning bed. After arriving, you recall from physics class that the threshold for tissue damage from ultraviolet light corresponds to a wavelength of 300nm. You decide to inquire about the limits of exposure. You're informed...

I know that there are different wave lengths, light and photons travels through these waves. All of them travel at the speed of light. But note that Gamma rays, and radio waves both travel at the speed of light, but the waves of gamma rays are shorter. So both gamma rays and radio waves travel...

Do photons experience "instant" lifetimes? So we know that, for instance, the Andromeda Galaxy is about 2 million lightyears away. That means that from an observer on Earth, we would watch a photon take 2 million years to actually reach that galaxy. But if we're the photon itself, would it...

If photons emit gravitons, then where does this energy come from? It can't pull it from its kinetic energy or maybe it just redshifts it but this seems weird. In order to emit gravitational waves do i haft to accelerate energy . I am trying to draw an analogy between gravitational waves and an...

Consider a photon moving in same direction with a gravitational field . So the speed of photon must become greater than speed of light. how its possible ? please answer this then I'll ask my next questions. :smile:

In trying to compute deflection angles for photons given their impact parameter (closest distance of trajectory to centre of black hole if unaffected) I am trying to numerically integrate the following equation (d^2/d(phi)^2)(u)+u=3Mu^2. However I am stuck as to how to work out the initial...

My understanding is that the EM field at r.t generated by a radiating source can be described as the amplitude of the EM fields at r, at time t. Is there a corresponding photon associated with that wave? A unit surface area at large r from the source will have less energy passing through it...

I was just wondering how the concept of a single photon is compared to the concept of a light wave. Is a single photon equivalent to a single light wave, or is a single photon just a tiny instantaneous part of a light wave? That is, if a single light wave of a given wavelength strikes a...

Are photons packets of electronic waves such as this below ----------\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/-------------------------------------\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/--------> Imagine the "------------------------->" line is an electronic beam.

Homework Statement A circuit employs a silicon solar cell to detect flashes of light lasting .25 seconds. The smallest current the circuit can detect reliably is .42 \muA. Assuming that all photons reaching the solar cell give their energy to a charge carrier, what is the minimum power...

I am told that when an atom absorbs a photon, it jumps up an energy level, these are discrete levels of energy etc etc. What determines how long the electron will hold this energy, and what exactly is the photon (wave) doing to up it's energy level. For ease of explanation, let's assume Neon...

Homework Statement Produce plots of I(λ, T) vs. λ for a blackbody at temperature T = 500 K. Compute the number of photons emitted with 400nm < λ < 450 nm for each temperature, assuming the total surface area is 1.0000 m2, to 5 significant figures. Homework Equations Planck's Law...

I would like to invite your comments on three thought experiments. The first i suggest demonstrates that light cannot be either a stream of photons nor a wave. The second questions if light can also have momentum and the third asks why a theorectical truth is not observed. Here we go, 1...

Hello, I was wondering if I could get any help with the following question/thing: Why does a stream of photons (let's say that one is fired every 3 seconds) at a double slit as shown in Young's double slit experiment create an interference pattern although there is no interference because the...

Build a Dyson sphere around a black hole (this is a thought experiment), so no more mass "falls in". Line the sphere with insanely bright lights. What happens to the black hole? I ask this because Prof. Sean Carroll in "From Eternity To Here" discusses whether there is a limit to the...

hi...does anybody know here...how you can calculate the probability density of photons?

I was told by a professor that electron microscopes are used instead of visible microscopes because photos are too big and make the picture blurry where are electrons are so small that they give detail. Considering photos don't really have a size, and have no mass, I don't understand this. Why...

I understand the basics of the double slit experiment. I'm trying to imagine what would happen if one slit could operate at a 180 degree phase shift, or nearly that. The obvious answer is not much except between the slits, and even less if the distance between the slits is near the wave length...

If I give you a black box and two photons go out of it (not necessarily in opposite directions), how can we know if the photons are entangled?

I'm not sure how to evaluate this integral. http://i111.photobucket.com/albums/n149/camarolt4z28/IMG_20110317_145314.jpg?t=1300391815 http://i111.photobucket.com/albums/n149/camarolt4z28/IMG_20110317_145259.jpg?t=1300391802

I need to explain a bit before asking my question. I have been reading about where photons come from and I feel I understand that part fairly well. I am wondering where they end up. It only makes sense that without photons being eliminated there would eventually be more and more and more. I read...

I have read different light frequncies have different lensing characteristics. Example, Gamma frequencies not capable of being focused with a lens. This made me think, what happens to E and B fields, for visible spectrum, when you focus photons with a lens? Anything? Do the fields distort...

Hypothetical question: Someone is in a 6' x 6' x 6' lightly ventilated space with a mirrored ceiling and a lit candle on a small table. Is there more photons in the room due to the mirror on the ceiling? Is there twice as much light as there would have been if there were no mirror in the...

In the semiclassical picture known to Einstein 1905, currents are produced by discrete electrons. But now, 100 years later, this picture is known to be approximate only, and that currents in metals are in fact produced by the continuous electron fields of QED. Discrete semiclassical particles...

Does the wave–particle duality apply only to electrons and photons?

If electron acts both as a wave and a particle; how does an electron emit a photon when it is a wave?

Does string theory predict that gravitons interact with photons? Can a particle traveling linearly at the speed of light curve space-time around it? I guess a photon could instantaneously have rest mass it if were energetic enough to convert to an electron-positron pair and back again...

...Do they? Are they too small or fast? If they are LIGHT particles, still, could they? ...That is all...