Magnetism & Photons: Mediating Electromagnetism & Spin

[fgsfds]

if electromagnetism is mediated by photons, what do photons have to do with magnetic fields?

more specifically, what is a magnetic field "made" of? surely there aren't photons released by an ordinary household magnet? i have a vague understanding that magnetic attraction has something to do with spin, can anyone explain this to me?

 

[Fightfish]

It might help to note that photons are actually "packets" of electromagnetic radiation.

 

[fgsfds]

i understand that, but surely magnetic fields aren't carried by photons as electromagnetism is. in fact, magnetic fields wouldn't be carried by any particle at all, as far as i understand, so if they're really electromagnetic phenomena, what do photons have to do with them?

 

[cragar]

photons are the excitation of the EM field . Maxwell thought what if an electric field could create a magnetic field and then that created an E field and so on and he found out that this traveled at the speed of light and he knew this was no coincidence , so we now know that light is a self-sustaining EM field .

 

[Antiphon]

Magnetic forces are transmitted by photons.

 

[Galap]

Photons are quantized EM fields. That is, they have an electric field component and a magnetic field component. They are perpendicular electric and magnetic fields moving through space generating each other.

And magnets interact with each other through the exchange of virtual photons.