We all know that the wave length (lambda=c/f). However, does any one visualised the width of waves??
Hi Assadeq Abolhaoshat Mansour Albendag , I'm not sure if I understand your question correctly. If by "width of waves" you mean the extent of the waves perpendicular to the direction of propagation: This depends on shape of the waves. In unbounded vacuum:
In the simplest but physically impossible case, we have homogeneous plane waves, here the width would be infinite. The width of waves around a dipol would depend on the distance from the dipol, i.e. it would increase during propagation. Also, it would depend on the elevation angle.
Maybe a reformulation of the question could be the following: "What is the diameter of a photon?"
You can really only measure by the interaction with matter, the strength of which is often expressed as an effective cross - sectional area (e.g. absorption or scattering cross section - expressed in units of area).
Piyapong Buahom I guess pulse length is a parameter that is the same as temperature for a thermodynamical system - the distribution of frequencies of a pulse can only be realized with more than one photon.
Hugh J Byrne I also see cross sections more as wave parameters, which are certainly influenced by specific quantities (Article Deviations from Beer's law on the microscale - Nonadditivity...
). For vacuum, I agree, such a description would break down...
Piyapong Buahom I think in terms of time, a photon can only be considered an instantaneous impulse, travelling at the speed of light (in a vacuum).
A collection of photons can makeup a pulse of light with a defined duration. In the theory of pulsed lasers, (see for example modelocking) the pulse width in terms of time is inversely proportional to the spectral bandwidth of the light, in accordance with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
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