English

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.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2507.16597,
  title  = {A photon density wavefunction},
  author = {Stéphane Virally},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.16597},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

4 pages

R2 v1 2026-07-01T04:13:27.243Z