# Does Electrical or Magnetic field attract photons?

## Main Question or Discussion Point

I have heard that photons are attracted by gravity. Does this apply to electrical or magnetic fields?

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No because photons have no charge polarity.

Yeah that makes sense. Do you know with what acceleration gravity pulls them? They ought to have some sort of mass to have a finite acceleration in response to gravity's force?

Staff Emeritus
2019 Award
In Newtonian gravity, which is wrong, photons are massless and are not affected by gravity. In GR, the gravitational "charge" is not mass but stress-energy, and for the a photon this is not zero.

Gravity does not "pull" them. Gravity bends space and the photon continues on a straight path through curved space. Photons are never accelerated, only the frequency is affected, which confirms they have no mass.

Gravity does not "pull" them. Gravity bends space and the photon continues on a straight path through curved space. Photons are never accelerated, only the frequency is affected, which confirms they have no mass.
Okay so how can they have a nonzero momentum?

Because they have energy.

Because they have energy.
Having energy does not imply having momentum, any object in rest has potential energy and zero momentum.

What does a photon at rest have?

Khashishi
If you simply asked if photons are attracted by EM fields, I would simply say no, and that would be the end of it. But since you specifically mention gravity, the answer is yes (for a certain definition of "attract"), very weakly, since electric and magnetic fields have mass-energy and generate a gravitational field. In Gaussian units,
$E=\frac{1}{8\pi}\left(\mathbf{E}^2+\mathbf{B}^2\right)$

Drakkith
Staff Emeritus