I am not a student nor a scientist. If a photon is a wave until it is measured somehow, how can it have a spin? A wave is a wave. Is spin simply a mathematical tag that we give to particles? Or do particle waves not have spin until they collapse back into an actual particle?
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2Does this answer your question? Can a wave possess spin? – Solomon Slow Sep 07 '20 at 12:37
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This is one of the things about quantum mechanics that our brains seem incapable of understanding. The math is clear, the mental picture is not. The well-meaning picture of " a wave until it is measured" gets to a particular aspect of what appears to be happening, but it might imply that the entity changes its nature when measured. The picture favored by many physicists has the photon being destroyed when absorbed by a detector, i.e., is measured. Is that any clearer? To me, not really; but we've gotten used to it, and those who work in the field have developed an intuition around it. – garyp Sep 07 '20 at 13:45
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The other question focus on the electron spin, but this question seem more about photons – sintetico Sep 08 '20 at 09:29
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In classical theory, a charge oscillating in one dimension introduces transverse components into its electric field. These move away as part of a linearly polarized electromagnetic wave. If the charge moves in a circle (or ellipse) the electric fields in the wave rotate and can impart angular momentum to a receiving charge.
R.W. Bird
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You can ask the same question classically. An electromagnetic wave is fluctuations of the electric force and magnetic force, which point in particular directions. If the directions follow the right-hand-rule, the wave has positive spin. If these directions follow the left-hand-rule, the wave has negative spin.
Eric David Kramer
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