I've been reading Feynman's "QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter" and was wondering how exactly does QED treat a photon. In the book, Feynman always asserts that photons are particles and not waves because the wave theory of light can't explain the individual clicks of a photo-multiplier when its hit with low energy light. But if the wave theory is wrong because it doesn't explain the photo-multiplier clicks, then QED could also be wrong because it does not 'explain' partial reflection, it only models it using probabilities and ignores thew underlying mechanism.
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Photons possess a wave-particle dualism in QED. – Vladimir Kalitvianski May 02 '21 at 14:54
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2"then QED could also be wrong because it does not 'explain' partial reflection... [it] ignores the underlying mechanism." A theory's job is to make testable predictions. Anything beyond that is just a description of the math (at best) or storytelling (at worst). Everyday experience is limited, because the objects of everyday experience are always being measured via their unavoidable interactions with other things. Subatomic particles are not always being measured, and that changes the game. QED makes predictions about measurements. Anything beyond that is just math -- or just storytelling. – Chiral Anomaly May 02 '21 at 15:26