Related papers: Photon wave mechanics and position eigenvectors
We find that biorthogonal quantum mechanics with a scalar product that counts both absorbed and emitted particles leads to covariant position operators with localized eigenvectors. In this manifestly covariant formulation the probability…
James Clerk Maxwell unknowingly discovered a correct relativistic, quantum theory for the light quantum, forty-three years before Einstein postulated the photon's existence. In this theory, the usual Maxwell field is the quantum wave…
We apply the formalism of quantum measurement theory to the idealized measurement of the position of a particle with an optical interferometer, finding that the backaction of counting entangled photons systematically collapses the…
Quantum theory of photons based on the first quantization technique, similar to that used by Schroedinger in the formulation of quantum mechanics, is considered. First, scalar quantum mechanics of photons operating with the photon wave…
A classical circularly polarized electromagnetic wave carries angular momentum, and represents the classical limit of a photon, which carries quantized spin. It is shown that a very similar picture of a circularly polarized coherent wave…
This paper gives a constructive answer to the question whether photon states can contain or not, and to what extent, the readings of rulers and clocks. The paper first shows explicitly that, along with the momentum representation, there is…
Uncertainty relation for photons that overcomes the difficulties caused by the nonexistence of the photon position operator is derived in quantum electrodynamics. The photon energy density plays the role of the probability density in…
All beams of electromagnetic radiation are made of photons. Therefore, it is important to find a precise relationship between the classical properties of the beam and the quantum characteristics of the photons that make a particular beam.…
We derive photon counting statistics for an output field of a single-photon wave packet interacting with a quantum system (e.g. a quantum harmonic oscillator or a two-level atom). We determine the exclusive probability densities for the…
The theoretical foundations of quantum mechanics and de Broglie--Bohm mechanics are analyzed and it is shown that both theories employ a formal approach to microphysics. By using a realistic approach it can be established that the internal…
A century after its conception, quantum mechanics still hold surprises that contradict many "common sense" notions. The contradiction is especially sharp in case one consider trajectories of truly quantum objects such as single photons.…
It is shown that the description of light beams in terms of the corresponding photon quantum numbers elucidates the properties of these beams. In particular, this description shows that the helicity quantum number plays the fundamental…
It had been a long standing problem that there is no consistent definition of photon position operator nor photon number density in the context of quantum theory. In this paper we derive the photon detection operator, which defines location…
The complete measurement of the quantum state of two correlated photons requires reconstructing the amplitude and phase of the biphoton wavefunction. We show how, by means of spatially resolved single photon detection, one can infer the…
Quantum mechanics of photons is derived from the theory of representations of the Poincar\'e group developed by Wigner. This theory places helicity as the most fundamental property; angular momentum and polarization are secondary…
Quantum mechanics cements the intimate relationship between the nature of light and its detection. Historically, quantum theories of photodetection have generally fallen into two categories: the first tries to determine what quantum field…
Applications that envisage utilizing the orbital angular momentum (OAM) at the single photon level assume that the OAM degrees of freedom that the photons inherit from the classical wave solutions are orthogonal. To test this critical…
It is shown that the spin and orbital angular momentum of electric dipole photons have the same operator structure and may differ from each other only by spatial dependence in the very vicinity of the atom. It is shown that the photon twins…
We investigate the meaning of the wave function by analyzing the mass and charge density distributions of a quantum system. According to protective measurement, a charged quantum system has mass and charge density distributing in space,…
In terms of a photon wave function corresponding to the (1, 0)+(0, 1) representation of the Lorentz group, the radiation and Coulomb fields within a source-free region can be described unitedly by a Lorentz-covariant Dirac-like equation. In…