RE: Physics questions about light
September 19, 2016 at 10:45 am
(This post was last modified: September 19, 2016 at 10:47 am by bennyboy.)
(September 19, 2016 at 2:14 am)Alex K Wrote: As to the other one, yes, from the point of view of feynman diagrams, the change in dispersion relation must come from interactions with the material, and in QED that always means obsorption and reemission. Again, this must happen in a coherent fashion...
Are photons considered to have anything like an identity? If, for example, a photon is absorbed by an atom and then reemitted, is it a "new" photon, or the "same" photon, or is the question meaningless in this context? For example, will the reemitted photon, if previously entangled with another, keep that entangled property, or will it kind of "reset"?
I'm sorry, I'm sure these are all first-year n00b questions that I'm asking, but I find it hard to continue on with my philosophical discussions about the nature of reality when I don't understand the best ideas physicists have right now. Your help so far has been VERY educational and very much appreciated, I'm sure not only by me.
