The Nature of Light: What is a Photon?

Series:
Optical Science and Engineering
Published:
July 25, 2008 by CRC Press - 456 Pages
Editor(s):
Chandra Roychoudhuri, University of Connecticut, Storrs, USA; A.F. Kracklauer; Kathy Creath

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$145.95
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ISBN 9781420044249
Cat# 44249
 

Features

  • Continues the debate on the definition of a photon and the concept of wave-particle duality
  • Defines a single indivisible quantum of light and details how its characteristics must change at every step of interaction with material dipoles
  • Articulates the gnawing inconsistencies embedded within the current definition for a photon, such as noncausality, nonlocality, delayed-choice, and teleportation
  • Offers a novel methodology of organizing incomplete information and framing it into a theory with human logics, helping to redefine physics as discovering reality in nature rather than inventing it
  • Explores a wide variety of pioneering concepts and experiments to validate the necessity of reopening the scientific debate on the apparently resolved wave-particle duality of photons

    • Summary

    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.

    Table of Contents

    Critical review of the mainstream photon model
    Light Reconsidered
    Arthur Zajonc
    What Is a Photon?
    Rodney Loudon
    What Is a Photon?
    David Finkelstein
    The Concept of the Photon—Revisited
    Ashok Muthukrishnan, Marlan O. Scully, and M. Suhail Zubairy
    A Photon Viewed from Wigner Phase Space
    Holger Mack and Wolfgang P. Schleich
    Epistemological origin of logical contradictions
    Inevitable Incompleteness of All Theories: An Epistemology to Continuously Refine Human Logics Toward Cosmic Logics
    Chandrasekhar Roychoudhuri
    Exploring photons beyond mainstream views
    “Single Photons” Have Not Been Detected: The Alternative “Photon Clump” Model
    Emilio Panarella
    What Is a Photon?
    C. Rangacharyulu
    Oh Photon, Photon, Whither Art Thou Gone?
    A.F. Kracklauer
    A Conclusive Experiment on Wave-Particle Duality of Light?
    Giorgio Brida, Marco Genovese, Marco Gramegna, and Enrico Predazzi
    The Photon Wave Function
    Ashok Muthukrishnan, Marlan O. Scully, and M. Suhail Zubairy
    Photons Are Fluctuations of a Random (Zeropoint) Radiation Filling the Whole Space
    Emilio Santos
    Violation of the Principle of Complementarity and Its Implications
    Shahriar S. Afshar
    The Bohr Model of the Photon
    Geoffrey Hunter, Marian Kowalski, and Camil Alexandrescu
    The Maxwell Wave Function of the Photon
    M.G. Raymer and Brian J. Smith
    Modeling Light Entangled in Polarization and Frequency: Case Study in Quantum Cryptography
    John M. Myers
    Photon–The Minimum Dose of Electromagnetic Radiation
    Tuomo Suntola
    Propagating Topological Singularities: Photons
    R.M. Kiehn
    The Photon: A Virtual Reality
    David L. Andrews
    The Photon and Its Measurability
    Edward Henry Dowdye, Jr.
    Phase Coherence in Multiple Scattering: Weak and Intense Monochromatic Light Wave Propagating in Cold Strontium Cloud
    David Wilkowski, Yannick Bidel, Thierry Chanelière, Robin Kaiser,
    Bruce Klappauf, and Christian Miniatura
    The Nature of Light: Description of Photon Diffraction Based upon Virtual Particle Exchange
    Michael J. Mobley

    B.P. Kosyakov
    From Quantum to Classical: Watching a Single Photon Become a Wave
    Marco Bellini, Alessandro Zavatta, and Silvia Viciani
    If Superposed Light Beams Do Not Redistribute Their Energy in the Absence of Detectors (Material Dipoles), Can a Single Indivisible Photon Interfere?
    Chandrasekhar Roychoudhuri
    What Processes Are behind Energy Redirection and Redistribution in Interference and Diffraction?
    Chandrasekhar Roychoudhuri
    Do We Count Indivisible Photons or Discrete Quantum Events Experienced by Detectors?
    Chandrasekhar Roychoudhuri and Negussie Tirfessa
    Direct Measurement of Light Waves
    E. Goulielmakis, M. Uiberacker, R. Kienberger, A. Baltuska, V. Yakovlev, A. Scrinzi, Th. Westerwalbesloh, U. Kleineberg, U. Heinzmann, M. Drescher, and F. Krausz
    Index

    Editorial Reviews

    " I would be surprised if any reader of the full volume will emerge with their view entirely unmodified, even if perhaps not clarified, by a careful reading of this volume. That is the hallmark of a significant contribution to the scientific literature, and on this basis I warmly recommend it."

    — Journal of Nanophotonics, October 2008

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