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Tagged with refraction photons
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Is there a good quantum explanation of refraction? [duplicate]
I'm aware of the classical explanation of refraction which deals with light being a wave that gets "slowed" down while passing from a medium to another. One problem that I have with this ...
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Why the photons are deflected during the refraction? [duplicate]
From what I learnt, when photons are passing throw a denser environnement with an positive angle (from the atmosphere to water for exemple), they are slow down. But I can't understand how this ...
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Does light accelerate? [duplicate]
If considering the general formula for acceleration, ie.
Δ V/ΔT, we would get zero as the velocity of light is constant and does not change.
However, what about when photons travel through different ...
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Photon momentum in Snell's law of refraction
In the drivation of Snell's law for light as EM waves, we have the wave vector components parallel to the interface $k1\parallel$ = $k2\parallel$ as shown in the picture.
From $k_{1x} = k_{2x}$, we ...
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Can we explain certain light phenomenon like refraction using particle nature of light?
Using Hugyen's principle and wave nature of light, refraction, diffraction are relatively simple to explain but I have been visualing a mental model for a couple of days where the photons on reach the ...
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Do photons moving at $c$ slow down when entering a medium or take a longer path and only appear to slow down and what happens to time? [duplicate]
Imagine a photon leaving a vacuum and entering a medium, say, air. I have 2 questions:
Some claim that the photon is slowed by the medium so its speed becomes less than $c$. Is that true or does ...
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What causes an object to be more reflective than refractive?
This is a question that a high school student asked me and I couldn't give him a satisfactory answer. He started by saying that
An object appears red because the energy corresponding to a "red&...
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Is there such a thing as a bare polariton?
When dealing with photons in matter, I have seen it treated in many ways depending on the material, this leads to exciton polaritons (when dealing with electrons and holes), plasmaritons (dealing with ...
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Why is it that, when light travels in a medium, we say it's made of "quasiparticles"?
I get why, in this model, light isn't really "made of" photons, because photons, by definition have zero mass and travel at $c$, whereas these quasiparticles, if I understand correctly, do ...
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Why is the phase of the reflected light important in the Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) experiment?
Trying to understand the Hong-Ou-Mandel effect (Wikipedia link) I got a bit lost with regards to what the reflection phases mean for the experiment and the kind of beam splitter required.
Instead of ...
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What does the wave created during refraction look like?
People always describe refraction as light stimulating the electrons in the glass, which create their own light, which interferes with the original wave. They always say “the math is too complex, but ...
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Speed of light exiting a prism [duplicate]
When light travels through a medium, even a sparse medium, it slows down from the speed of light in vacuum to the speed of light in that medium.
When that light re-enters a true vacuum, it will resume ...
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Speed of photon
Background:
I originally asked this question
Does a single photon propagate with phase velocity or front velocity through a dispersive material? about the speed of a single photon in a dispersive ...
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Does a single photon propagate with phase velocity or front velocity through a dispersive material?
I know that we explain the slowing down of light in a dispersive medium classically, by inducing small dipoles in the medium (which holds as long as being far away from absorption bands), and the ...
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What is the acceleration of light (photon) in vacuum? [duplicate]
We all know that the speed of light is 299792458m/s, but what is the acceleration of photons? That is to say, does the photon have a speed transition from zero to the speed of light?
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