A photon density wavefunction
Quantum Physics
2025-07-30 v2
Abstract
Maxwell's equations in the vacuum can be formally cast in the form of Schr\"odinger's equation. Unfortunately, the vector to which this equation directly applies is not a wavefunction: its amplitude squared is not a probability density but the expected energy density of the field. Since we can count photons, there must be a more convincing wavefunction, derived from the EM field, whose amplitude squared is an expected photon density. Mandel proposed the second quantized version of such a wavefunction, but did not link it directly to the EM field. We show how this can be accomplished.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2507.16597,
title = {A photon density wavefunction},
author = {Stéphane Virally},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.16597},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
4 pages