Usually photons are considered to be uncharged and to have spin 1 hbar. But could a variety of photon have spin 1/2 hbar if it is electrically charged and forms an electron? What if such a charged photon generates the relativistic de Broglie wavelength?
A photon is an electrically neutral, massless spin-1 vector boson. An electron is an electrically charged, massive, spin-1/2 fermion. If you give a photon a charge, give it a rest mass, and change it from a spin-1 boson to a spin-1/2 fermion... you have taken away everything that makes a photon a photon and just replaced it with the properties of the electron. By this standard, everything is everything else, you just need to remove the unwanted properties and add the new ones... but the problem is, things are what they are precisely because they have those characteristic properties in the first place. So if you strip away all the properties that make a photon a photon, it's not really a photon anymore.
Hello Sergey, In this case it is a photon carrying the electric charge of the electron. The photon is curled up or moves in a helical trajectory and also has the rest mass of the electron. Please see my ResearchGate publication "The electron is a charged photon with the de Broglie wavelength" at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272167387_The_Electron_is_a_Charged_Photon_with_the_de_Broglie_Wavelength .
Article The Electron is a Charged Photon with the De Broglie Wavelength
A photon is an electrically neutral, massless spin-1 vector boson. An electron is an electrically charged, massive, spin-1/2 fermion. If you give a photon a charge, give it a rest mass, and change it from a spin-1 boson to a spin-1/2 fermion... you have taken away everything that makes a photon a photon and just replaced it with the properties of the electron. By this standard, everything is everything else, you just need to remove the unwanted properties and add the new ones... but the problem is, things are what they are precisely because they have those characteristic properties in the first place. So if you strip away all the properties that make a photon a photon, it's not really a photon anymore.
Hi V.T., Thanks for your comment. The charged photon still moves at c, has energy E=hf and p=h/lambda which are fundamental properties of a photon, so not everything is taken away. In fact perhaps the essentials remain.
If your charged photon is still massless, it is not an electron. An electron has a rest mass of 511 keV.
The closest thing we have to charged photons would be the W+/W- vector bosons, but they are very massive, at around 80 GeV. They're also spin-1 vector particles, not spin-1/2 fermions.
Hi V.T. , I didn't say the charged photon is massless, I said above that it has the rest mass of an electron. Rest mass is determined by the equation E^2 = p^2 c^2 + m^2 c^4. The charged photon has longitudinal momentum p=gamma mv which is the momentum of the electron, and E=gamma mc^2 which is the total energy of the electron. So it will also have m=0.511MeV/c^2 which is the rest mass of the electron.
OK, so you changed the charge; you changed the rest mass; what about spin?
Hi V.T., The spin of the charged photon has to be 1/2 hbar so that it will be equal to the spin of the electron, if the electron is to be a charged photon. This makes the charged photon a fermion like the electron. So I'm proposing that there are two varieties of photon -- a spin 1 boson variety and a spin 1/2 fermion variety. What we have been calling an electron is the second (so far unrecognized) variety of photon. This would explain why the electron has wave/particle properties like diffraction, double-slit phenomena etc because it is a variety of photon, which has these properties. The charged photon also generates the relativistic de Broglie wavelength along the axis of its helical motion, the same as the electron.
Of course not: an electron is a massive particle, with spin 1/2 and carries electric and weak charges; a photon is a massless particle, with spin 1 and carries neither electric nor weak charges. All these technical terms have a specific meaning (the mass and spin are the Casimirs of the Poincaré group, for instance)-so, while the title of the question is syntactically and grammatically correct, it is, also, meaningless: there isn't any context in physics where the term ``charged photon'' can be assigned any meaning. That's the difference between word play and physics.
The *meaning* of the technical terms is the subject of quantum field theory, in general and, for the particles in question, the Standard Model. The grammar and syntax is the subject of linguistics. The meaning of words is distinct from how they're combined in sentences.
So then, Richard, if you changed the spin, you changed the rest mass, and you changed the electric charge, what exactly makes this thing still a photon? I mean, you may call it a photon (rather confusingly, I should add; Stam Nicholis calls it word play, and I am sympathetic to his characterization) if you wish, but it now quacks like an electron, walks like an electron, so in my vocabulary, it is an electron, not a photon.
The electron's (and the photon's, and any other elementary particle's) quantum behavior is explained very well by quantum field theory, where what we call particles are quantized excitations of the corresponding field, and their wave/particle behavior is simply a manifestation of the fact that these excitations may be localized in coordinate space or in momentum space but not in both at the same time. What is that that calling the electron a photon accomplishes that would make it preferable to QFT, with its multitude of exquisitely testable predictions?
I do not understand the question, which sounds totally meaningless to me.
The electron is a charged photon with spin 1/2?
I am not able to conceive any susy capable of such a transformation.
An analogous question may be raised asking whether neutrino is a 1/2 spin photon, it is well known that they cannot be "translated" one into the other since they are characterized by so different properties (the field with which they interact, the quantum numbers they bear, the relevant rules of conservations...) that any point of view like the one you propose is hard to be accepted.
If you consider a world in which only electromagnetic interactions exist and only two particles exist (namely electrons and photons) may be a photon-electron principle of complementarity can be conceived since electrons could interact only electromagnetically (gravitational and weak interactions in such a world are forbidden) and therefore need photons to "talk" each other.
In this world the spin has (perhaps) no meaning (since the Pauli principle could hardly be experienced) and even mass has no meaning (since no gravitational effect exists). May be in this world your point of view has a chance to make sense. I doubt however that in this world, observer making experiments and conceiving theories can exist.
Best Regards
G. Dattoli
Hello Mohamed,
Could you explain what you mean more precisely? Thanks.
Hello Christian, I'm proposing that there are 2 varieties of photon: uncharged and charged, the second being unrecognized so far because we call it an electron (or other particles like muon and tau). I'm not interested in playing name games, but names do have a psychological impact that can affect how people think about physics and other things. Suppose a unicorn is a horse with a horn. In a field of 10 ordinary horses and 10 unicorns, how many horses are in the field? Similarly, a charged photon has some of the properties of an uncharged photon, like c=f lambda, E=hf and p=h/lambda but a different spin and a different charge and moves differently (perhaps because of its different spin/and or charge.
I agree that we don't "have to believe" anything and that Dirac didn't choose his words well in this case. But we understand what he meant, although it actually doesn't follow logically: Theory A (the Dirac equation) predicts B and C. C is an experimental result predicted by A so B is also correct since it is also predicted by A. Not logical but it may still be correct (or may be not correct).
Hello Giuseppi, The charged photon approach to modeling the electron has already achieved some concrete theoretical results. It gives a new way of understanding the relativistic energy-momentum equation of an electron: E^2 = p^2 c^2 + m^2 c^4 . It has produced a new and easy derivation for the relativistic de Broglie wavelength h/(gamma mv) of an electron, along with its quantum phase velocity c^2/v. It has produced a derivation of the quantum wave equation for a free electron, derived from the circulating charged photon model emitting a plane wave along its helical trajectory. It has potential for providing a deeper understanding of the Schrodinger equation and the Dirac equation if charged photons underly both these quantitative descriptions of electrons as the observable properties of charged photons. Clearly further research is needed.
Hello Christian, Thank you for your further comment. It is well known that the ground state of a hydrogen atom doesn't radiate even though it contains a moving electron. This non-radiation is the fact. This is explained by the theories of quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics. The charged photon model of the relativistic electron alone does not provide a specific model of the charged photon, only a generic model with speed c , frequency f=E/h and momentum p=h/lambda. But it could be that with the charged photon having spin 1/2 hbar and charge -e it is only the average acceleration of the electric charge that radiates, while a charged photon for an electron moving at constant speed, like the ground state of a hydrogen atom containing a moving electron where the speed is variable, does not radiate. Or the charge could be distributed in the charged photon such that all the radiation of the charge, taken together, cancels out. Or that there is something we still don't understand about radiation from electric charge.
Hello Bernd, Yes, Hestenes is one of a number of researchers who has tried to understand the inner structure of the electron in order to try to explain its spin, zitterbewegung, magnetic moment and other properties. This effort is still going on.
Hello Christian, Your phase space approach to 3+1 dimensional spacetime is very interesting. You say in your article: "On the fundamental level, the world is apparently very different from our every day experience: loosely speaking it is flat. The apparent 3+1 dimensional spacetime is “in reality” a four-dimensional phase space. " I agree that there must be a deeper level to 'reality' beyond everyday experience, but you are trying to demonstrate this mathematically. In a similar way, an electron and a photon are two expressions of "everyday experience". But there is likely a deeper level where electrons and photons are seen in a more unitary light, as different expressions of an unobserved quantum world that manifests in various ways to produce our experienced world.
Hello Stam, Thank your for your comments and criticisms. I am not saying that a spin 1 uncharged photon with no rest mass is the same as a spin 1/2 charged electron with rest mass. Clearly these are two different particles. What I am proposing is that a hypothetical particle (a charged photon) may have the essential properties of an ordinary photon -- its speed of light c, its momentum p=h/lambda and its energy E=hf relationships -- and yet have a different spin, charge and rest mass than the ordinary photon. We may differ on what we think are the essential properties of a photon, but I think that the properties of a photon -- the photon's charge, spin and rest mass --which change in a particle transformation such as electron-positron pair production when a photon interacts with an atomic nucleus (to conserve linear momentum) may be less essential to the fundamental nature of the photon than the properties of the proposed hypothetical photon that may remain--c, p=h/lambda and E=hf--to form the electron with its charge, spin and rest mass. So I am proposing that it may be useful to think of photons as coming in two varieties that both have the speed of light, energy and momentum properties mentioned above but have different charge, spin and rest mass. In pair production, one particle--the photon-- is transformed into two different particles. The spin 1 photon converts to 2 spin 1/2 particles, the uncharged photon is converted into two oppositely charged particles, and the no-rest-mass photon is converted into 2 particles with rest mass, when the the incoming photon has sufficient energy. But what if the essential properties of the photon -- c, E=hf, and p=h/lambda -- remain unobserved in the electron (yet generate the electron's de Broglie wavelength and the electron's quantum wave functions), while the observed properties spin, charge and rest mass of the charged photon--now called an electron -- are different that that of the ordinary photon. Are you saying that this view is not physically meaningful or contradicts any current physical theory?
Particles are defined by the Casimirs of the Poincaré group (mass and spin) and by their charges under inernal symmetries. That's why the term ``charged photon'' is meaningless. There are, of course, many other spin 1, massless, electrically neutral particles in extensions of the Standard Model-depending on the extension-but they do not mediate electromagnetic interactions, that's why they're not called photons. They may, also, carry other internal charges.
Indeed, the photon itself is the linear combination of the two, electrically neutral, gauge bosons of the SU(2) x U(1)_hypercharge gauge group of the Standard Model, that remains massless after spontaneous breaking of the symmetry to the U(1) of electromagnetism-the other linear combination, the Z, acquires a mass-and does not mediate electromagnetic interactions. It carries weak charge and mediates weak interactions.
A spin 1 particle will or will not interact with specific spin 1/2 particles, depending on the properties of the interactions. That it can do so at all is a consequence of Poincaré invariance (in particular, conservation of total angular momentum) but the internal symmetries dictate the rest. For instance neutrinos do not interact, directly, with photons-there's no neutrino-neutrino-photon vertex, since the neutrino is electrically neutral, even though neutrinos do have spin 1/2 and the photon does have spin 1. (They interact due to the fact that neutrinos do interact, through weak interactions, with electrically charged leptons, that, since they are electrically charged, do interact with photons.)
Therefore the last statements (``But what if...'') are wrong. The correct formulation is explained in all books and courses on quantum field theory, cf. http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/tong/qft.html, for instance, and a discussion forum isn't the appropriate context for such a course-only for discussions once the prerequisite material has been studied.
Hello Stam, Thanks for the criticisms and suggestions about quantum field theory.
Richard> The charged photon still moves at c
Please calculate for me the electric and magnetic fields of a classical charged particle moving at c. As a researcher asking questions in the fields you have labelled, you surely know how to do that.
Hi Kare,
Classical charged particles have rest mass so they don't move at c.
Hello Kare, Obviously not. An electron moves at less that c and it is a quantized charged particle. I'm proposing that in the charged-photon model of the relativistic electron, the helically-moving charged photon's longitudinal velocity component along its helical axis is the velocity of the electron, which is less than c. The charged photon itself moves at c and has momentum P=gamma mc directed along its helical trajectory and a longitudinal momentum component p=gamma mv along its helical axis, which is the electron's momentum.
Richard~
OK. You have a charged particle moving at velocity c in a helical orbit, so that the velocity along the helicity axis is less that c. By a Lorentz transformation along the helicity axis we can consider it to rotate in a planar circular orbit at velocity c.
Please calculate the (now time dependent) electromagnetic fields, and emitted energy per time unit for such a configuration. Accelerator and High Energy physicists around the world, and the energy companies providing electricity to LHC, would be very eager to learn how you can make these quantities finite (as you must for having a viable model).
Hello Kåre
An excellent request. Fortunately we already have some experience with issues like this. A hydrogen atom in its ground state doesn’t radiate energy. This is now explained by quantum mechanics, which was created partly to explain why hydrogen atoms in their ground state don’t radiate energy. In the same way, a circulating electric charge moving with a charged photon at the speed of light (acting like an electron moving at sublight speed) may also be like the ground state of a hydrogen atom -- it doesn’t radiate energy but it is producing an electric field as well as a quantum wave function that predicts where the electron may be found next, just like the eigenfunctions for the electron in the hydrogen atom. I showed in my article “The electron is a charged photon with the de Broglie wavelength” at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272167387_The_Electron_is_a_Charged_Photon_with_the_de_Broglie_Wavelength that if the charged photon moving in a helical trajectory generates a plane wave along this trajectory, the region along the helical axis of the charged photon where this plane wave intersects the helical axis has a mathematical wave which is the quantum wave function of a free electron, with its de Broglie wavelength and its phase velocity c^2/v, moving along the helical axis. (See Figure 2 in my de Broglie wavelength article above where this is shown geometrically.) This follows from the geometry of the circulating charged photon model. Now if the charged photon moves at lightspeed in a circular path (which it could do by a Lorentz transformation as you say) it would then be sending out a plane wave along its circular trajectory. This needs to be analyzed graphically, but could also show that the electron is not radiating energy but generating a quantum wave function predicting the probability of where the electron will be found next.
I am suggesting, based on a look at how well the charged photon model fits the Schrodinger equation for a free electron (see my article at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271077958_The_Charged-Photon_Model_of_the_Electron_Fits_the_Schrdinger_Equation ), that the circulating charged photon could, in the presence of a Coulomb potential, generate the set of eigenfunctions and eigenvalues that is found for the electron in the hydrogen atom. This would not generate unlimited energy, but it could suggest that the charged photon actually underlies the quantum mechanics of the electron, which would be nearly as good, from a scientific point of view.
Article The Electron is a Charged Photon with the De Broglie Wavelength
Article The Charged-Photon Model of the Electron Fits the Schrödinger Equation
Hello Bernd,
It would interesting to know if a charged photon could also stand still.
Hello Bernd,Your approach also sounds very interesting. It's amazing that mathematical approaches like Clifford algebra can bring new insights to physical issues.
Hello Stam,
If Louis de Broglie had associated the internal frequency of a moving electron with the frequency of a charged photon rather than with the frequency of a material oscillator, and derived the electron's relativistic de Broglie wavelength from the wavelength of the charged photon instead of by using his "harmony of phases" approach, I think he still would have received the Nobel prize for his correct prediction, and quantum mechanics today might have been based on the charged photon. Theoretical physics now seems to imply that a charged photon is an impossibility. Rather ironic. But time will tell.
Very interesting! An entangled pair of photons of individual wavelengths Lambda can have a de Broglie wavelength of Lambda/2 and acts like a Bose condensate.
Dear Richard!
Your question is very interesting.
During the electron-positron pair-production a photon disintegrate into two charged elementary particles with spin 1/2. Over 1,022MeV energy a photon ("free energy" or "free matter") can transform into particles ("material matter"). You can also name the electron-positron-pair a variety of photon and it is impossible that a single electron or positron originate.
Pair-production and annihilation of electron and positron are fundametal processes in universe and many radioactive processes. You can prove a electron-positron pair-production as cause of the positron-emission In my opinion the theories are away from understanding.
Your question in itself contains some more fundamental problems. What is electrical load? What means electromagnetic waves of a photon? We have theories and mathematical equations, but do we really know what are the causes?
Dear Richard,
Your model does not explain how a photon moving in a circle. From a mechanical standpoint, this move requires / implies a force to cancel the centrifugal force. How does this force? In terms of electromagnetic photon can move on a curve if the environment, locally, has a refractive index r dependent. How do we explain this index? General relativity requires the movement on a circle of a photon as a mass to curve spacetime. Nonlinear Electrodynamics requires an intense electromagnetic field. Are these compatible with the mass of an electron confined in the classic volume of an electron?
Ion S.
Dear Ion,
You're right that my charged photon model doesn't explain the force (calculated to be approximately 1 Newton) that allows the charged photon to move in a circle in the electron model. It's a huge force on a single elementary particle. But there are enough positive features of the charged photon model (for example explaining the electron's spin 1/2 and the electron's inertial mass mo , see https://www.researchgate.net/publication/292215155_The_Origin_of_the_Electron%27s_Inertia ) that I think it is worth exploring what could produce such a force to make a photon circulate with such a small radius (hbar/2mc) and high centripetal acceleration.
Richard
Dear Richard,
your question goes against all current theories. But your idea to compare the elementary charged particles electron and positron with the uncharged photon resp. find out a relationship is interesting. What is charge? What caused charge? Nobody can give the answer. The theoretical invention of the unproven "quarks" make the charge finally to a mystery.
In the 20th century the scientists made many theories about reality. I think it's time to recognise the causes of the reality.
Best wishes!
Hans
Dear Richard,
In a recent publication I found that Dirac equation in quaternionic form yields Maxwell equations. This could allow such a possibility where a photon could emerge from a combination of electrons like the Cooper pairs in superconductivity. Bear in mind that in pair production the photon disintegrates into an electron and a positron.
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