CRC Prеss, Taylor & Francis Group, Boca Raton, FL, 2008, 456
pages
Focusing on the unresolved debate between Newton and Huygens from 300 years ago, The Nature of Light: What is a Photon? discusses the reality behind enigmatic photons. It explores the fundamental issues pertaining to light that still exist today.
Gathering contributions from globally recognized specialists in electrodynamics and quantum optics, the book begins by clearly presenting the mainstream view of the nature of light and photons. It then provides a new and challenging scientific epistemology that explains how to overcome the prevailing paradoxes and confusions arising from the accepted definition of a photon as a monochromatic Fourier mode of the vacuum. The book concludes with an array of experiments that demonstrate the innovative thinking needed to examine the wave-particle duality of photons.
Looking at photons from both mainstream and out-of-box viewpoints, this volume is sure to inspire the next generation of quantum optics scientists and engineers to go beyond the Copenhagen interpretation and formulate new conceptual ideas about light–matter interactions and substantiate them through inventive applications.
Critical Reviews of Mainstream Photon Model
Light Reconsidered
What Is a Photon?
The Concept of the Photon—Revisited
A Photon Viewed from Wigner Phase Space
Epistemological Origin of Logical Contradiction
Inevitable Incompleteness of All Theories: An Epistemology to Continuously Refine Human Logics Towards Cosmic Logics
Single Photons Have not Been Detected: The Alteative Photon Clump Model
Exploring Photons beyond Mainstream Views
What Is a Photon?
Oh Photon, Photon; Whither Art Thou Gone?
The Photon Wave Function
Photons Are Fluctuations of a Random (Zeropoint) Radiation Filling the Whole Space
Violation of the Principle of Complementarity and Its Implications
The Bohr Model of the Photon
The Maxwell Wave Function of the Photon
Modeling Light Entangled in Polarization and Frequency: Case Study in Quantum Cryptography
Photon—The Minimum Dose of Electromagnetic Radiation
Propagating Topological Singularities: Photons
The Photon: A Virtual Reality
The Photon and Its Measurability
Phase Coherence in Multiple Scattering: Weak and Intense Monochromatic Light Wave Propagating in Cold Strontium Cloud
The Nature of Light: Description of Photon Diffraction Based Upon Virtual Particle Exchange
What Physics Is Encoded in Maxwell’s Equations?
From Quantum to Classical: Watching a Single Photon Become a Wave
If Superposed Light Beams Do not Re-Distribute Their Energy in the Absence of Detectors (Material Dipoles), Can a Single Indivisible Photon Interfere?
What Processes Are behind Energy Re-Direction and Re-Distribution in Interference and Diffraction?
Do We Count Indivisible Photons or Discrete Quantum Events Experienced by Detectors?
Direct Measurement of Light Waves
Focusing on the unresolved debate between Newton and Huygens from 300 years ago, The Nature of Light: What is a Photon? discusses the reality behind enigmatic photons. It explores the fundamental issues pertaining to light that still exist today.
Gathering contributions from globally recognized specialists in electrodynamics and quantum optics, the book begins by clearly presenting the mainstream view of the nature of light and photons. It then provides a new and challenging scientific epistemology that explains how to overcome the prevailing paradoxes and confusions arising from the accepted definition of a photon as a monochromatic Fourier mode of the vacuum. The book concludes with an array of experiments that demonstrate the innovative thinking needed to examine the wave-particle duality of photons.
Looking at photons from both mainstream and out-of-box viewpoints, this volume is sure to inspire the next generation of quantum optics scientists and engineers to go beyond the Copenhagen interpretation and formulate new conceptual ideas about light–matter interactions and substantiate them through inventive applications.
Critical Reviews of Mainstream Photon Model
Light Reconsidered
What Is a Photon?
The Concept of the Photon—Revisited
A Photon Viewed from Wigner Phase Space
Epistemological Origin of Logical Contradiction
Inevitable Incompleteness of All Theories: An Epistemology to Continuously Refine Human Logics Towards Cosmic Logics
Single Photons Have not Been Detected: The Alteative Photon Clump Model
Exploring Photons beyond Mainstream Views
What Is a Photon?
Oh Photon, Photon; Whither Art Thou Gone?
The Photon Wave Function
Photons Are Fluctuations of a Random (Zeropoint) Radiation Filling the Whole Space
Violation of the Principle of Complementarity and Its Implications
The Bohr Model of the Photon
The Maxwell Wave Function of the Photon
Modeling Light Entangled in Polarization and Frequency: Case Study in Quantum Cryptography
Photon—The Minimum Dose of Electromagnetic Radiation
Propagating Topological Singularities: Photons
The Photon: A Virtual Reality
The Photon and Its Measurability
Phase Coherence in Multiple Scattering: Weak and Intense Monochromatic Light Wave Propagating in Cold Strontium Cloud
The Nature of Light: Description of Photon Diffraction Based Upon Virtual Particle Exchange
What Physics Is Encoded in Maxwell’s Equations?
From Quantum to Classical: Watching a Single Photon Become a Wave
If Superposed Light Beams Do not Re-Distribute Their Energy in the Absence of Detectors (Material Dipoles), Can a Single Indivisible Photon Interfere?
What Processes Are behind Energy Re-Direction and Re-Distribution in Interference and Diffraction?
Do We Count Indivisible Photons or Discrete Quantum Events Experienced by Detectors?
Direct Measurement of Light Waves