Waves are oscillating so the term frequency is associated with them, but what is meant by the frequency of a photon as an equation says $E=hf$? Does this mean that photon also oscillate in a particular direction?
Asked
Active
Viewed 101 times
1 Answers
-1
A photon is defined as the perturbation of the U(1) gauge field. Since it seems you just want a simple thing to sort your doubt, I'll provide a non-technical 'intuitive' answer.
Think of a photon as simply being a 'quanta' bundle of localized energy in the Maxwell's gauge field. This is done mathematically by constructing wave-packets out of the photon propagator. At this point, frequency is simply a label for the photon. It tells us what wavelength, or energy, or momentum, does this particular photon correspond to. This frequency does not imply that the photon is oscillating. A photon is just a name for a collection of localized wave-packets.
In fact in QFT, we don't speak of a photon of frequency this or that. It is just an excitation of massless field carrying spin-1 modes. The field itself will have frequencies and so on.
I hope I did not confuse you further.
-
hope springs eternal ;-) – JEB May 25 '18 at 13:41
-
My pedantic pet peeve: "quanta" is the plural of "quantum". You can't have "a quanta". (Also, alumni is the plural of alumnus) – The Photon May 25 '18 at 14:49
-
Haha @ThePhoton – topologically_astounded May 25 '18 at 14:52
-
I'd be interested in understanding what makes my response receive a down-vote? Not as a complain but looking for some constructive criticism. – topologically_astounded May 27 '18 at 11:18