Two-photon physics/quantum electrodynamics

  • Thread starter Thread starter Antigone
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Electrodynamics
Antigone
Messages
36
Reaction score
0
In a Wikipedia article about two-photon physics it is stated: "From quantum electrodynamics it can be found that photons cannot couple directly to each other, since they carry no charge, but half wavelength is a positive charge and the next half wavelength is a negative charge."

This is the article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-photon_physics

Does the statement "half wavelength is a positive charge and the next half wavelength is a negative charge" mean that photon actually consists of negative and positive charges at once? That one half of the wavelength is positive and the other one is negative? Is that a true statement?
 
Physics news on Phys.org
Does the statement "half wavelength is a positive charge and the next half wavelength is a negative charge" mean that photon actually consists of negative and positive charges at once?
No.
That one half of the wavelength is positive and the other one is negative?
No.
Is that a true statement?
The one in wikipedia? It's a descriptive statement.

Note: you have to be careful about thinking of anything as "actually" happening in quantum mechanics.
QED does not tell us what is "actually" going on, it just tells us how to do some math that helps with predicting the outcome of experiments.

In this case the picture being painted helps visualize how photon-photon EM interactions can happen - when it is a neutral particle and EM works with charged particles.
 
Not an expert in QM. AFAIK, Schrödinger's equation is quite different from the classical wave equation. The former is an equation for the dynamics of the state of a (quantum?) system, the latter is an equation for the dynamics of a (classical) degree of freedom. As a matter of fact, Schrödinger's equation is first order in time derivatives, while the classical wave equation is second order. But, AFAIK, Schrödinger's equation is a wave equation; only its interpretation makes it non-classical...
Insights auto threads is broken atm, so I'm manually creating these for new Insight articles. Towards the end of the first lecture for the Qiskit Global Summer School 2025, Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, Olivia Lanes (Global Lead, Content and Education IBM) stated... Source: https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/quantum-entanglement-is-a-kinematic-fact-not-a-dynamical-effect/ by @RUTA
Is it possible, and fruitful, to use certain conceptual and technical tools from effective field theory (coarse-graining/integrating-out, power-counting, matching, RG) to think about the relationship between the fundamental (quantum) and the emergent (classical), both to account for the quasi-autonomy of the classical level and to quantify residual quantum corrections? By “emergent,” I mean the following: after integrating out fast/irrelevant quantum degrees of freedom (high-energy modes...
Back
Top