2

whenever I heard of the "wave-particle" duality of photons, I always thought they existed as a weird combination of physical waves and particles.

Since finding about De Broglie wavelengths and matter waves, however, I have learnt that the "waves" in quantum mechanics are actually probability waves; the oscillations are actually of the real and complex components of the waves function and not of some physical quantity.

however, isn't the oscillating quantity for electromagnetic waves the electric and magnetic field. Are electromagnetic radiation "waves" of probability or real physical waves? Is the waves nature of photons fundamentally different than that of matter?

Qmechanic
  • 201,751
Vulgar Mechanick
  • 1,462
  • What does "physical" mean? – WillO Nov 29 '20 at 03:02
  • something like displacement, electric/magnetic fields etc.. I think There s clear contrast between oscillations of quantities like displacement and those of real and complex components of a wavefunction which doesn't even mean anything in itself. – Vulgar Mechanick Nov 29 '20 at 04:04
  • In what sense does a wave function "not mean anything in itself" any more than an electromagnetic field or the Statue of Liberty does "not mean anything in itself"? I'm pretty sure that if it didn't mean anything, we wouldn't talk about it quite so much. – WillO Nov 29 '20 at 05:08
  • I thought it was the square of the amplitude, not the wave function itself that was important. Anyway, I still think a probability wave is fundamentally different than a regular "wave". – Vulgar Mechanick Nov 29 '20 at 09:22

1 Answers1

2

Photons are probability waves of photons. Photonic waves if you will. They are excitations of the photon quantum field, in the same way electrons are excitations of the electron quantum field.

However, in the classical limit, photons look like simply oscillations in an electric and magnetic field.

However, quantum field theory (qft) tells us that there actually is no "electric" or "magnetic" fields, but only the single photon field, which interacts with all other fields of charged particles.

Electromagnetism is simply the exchange of virtual photons between charged particles, and changes in this look like changes in an electric field that propagates through space.

Anthony Khodanian
  • 679