English

Photon Position Operator and Localization of Photons inside a Waveguide

Quantum Physics 2007-05-23 v1

Abstract

In this article, we show that in the level of quantum mechanics, a photon position operator with commuting components can be obtained in a more natural way; in the level of quantum field theory, the photon position operator corresponds to the center of the photon number. It is most interesting for us to show that, a photon inside a waveguide can be localized in the same sense that a massive particle can be localized in free space, and just as that it is impossible to localize a massive particle with a greater precision than its Compton wavelength, one can also arrival at a similar conclusion: it is impossible to localize a photon inside a waveguide with a greater precision than its equivalent Compton wavelength, which owing to evanescent-wave or photon-tunneling phenomena.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.quant-ph/0511270,
  title  = {Photon Position Operator and Localization of Photons inside a Waveguide},
  author = {Zhi-Yong Wang and Cai-Dong Xiong and Ole Keller},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:quant-ph/0511270},
  year   = {2007}
}

Comments

22 pages, 1 figure