I understand frequency depicted as an oscillation over time, (sound pressure, pendulum swing, etc.). What then can be meant by the frequency of a photon, which we think of as traveling in a straight line (not a wave) and having a fixed energy level?
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What you think of is your intuition from classical mechanics. It's just wrong. Also, the energy of a wave is independent of the oscillation, too. – Martin Jul 07 '16 at 14:04
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Frequency is related to the energy of the photon by $E=hf$. – lemon Jul 07 '16 at 14:41
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The photon is an elementary particle and as you correctly state it just has a spin and an energy, which has been identifiedas E=h*nu, where nu is the frequency of the classical electromagnetic wave which is built up from a huge number of same energy photons.
As a quantum mechanical particle the photon has a wavefunction. This wave function is a solution of Maxwell's equations where the differentials become quantum mechanical operators on the psi of the photon. The potential A and from that the E and B fields exist within the complex form of the wavefunction and build up the classical electromagnetic field. The frequency is within the complex formulation that for an individual photon builds up the probability wave properties which appear in the interference effects of individual photons.
anna v
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