Fine, fine. I agree, I fell prey, after such a long post, to laziness in my language. I did not mean 'fundamental' as in a fundamental entity of ontological existence, but rather that on the femtoscale the fields are quantized. I wanted to illucidate that, relevant to the post that started...
correction
The relativistic expression for the conservation of four-momentum should read:
E^2=(pc)^2+(m0c^2)^2
m0 is the rest mass. p is the relativistc momentum, which is gamma*m0v, gamma being
( 1-(v/c)^2 )^(-1/2)
thank you ZapperZ and jtbell for helping to clarify this issue.
I think the original question being posed was about simple relativistic collisions and not the Higgs mechanism, to start off. So let's begin with E=mc^2
This is a relationship between mass and energy. This means, in one way...
Yes, this is exactly right. E=hf, so any measurement determining the frequency exactly will yield the momentum exactly, making localization unfeasible. As to your question about the oscillating dipole field, Hecht describes it in Optics and I believe it is solved more thoroughly in Jackson's...
An overview of the description of E-M wave phenomena
Warning, this is super long.
Ok, to clarify. Electromagnetic phenomena occur in different distance scales, namely the classical and the quantum. Magnetic fields do not exist in isolation from electric fields because there exist no...
Ah. I notice that most people have more familiarity with Arfken than with Hassani, and hence tend to propose Arfken. I must say that I have taken a close look at both texts and I prefer Hassani, for the following reason. Arfken may seem more "pedagogical," whatever such a term entails, but...