The Wave-Particle Properties of Electromagnetic Radiation

Sergey V. Gaponenko

Edward K. Yeargers

Having just described electromagnetic radiation as a wave, it may seem a bit peculiar to embark on a particle description of that radiation. Perhaps it will help to recall from Chapter 2 that our perception of something depends in part on the means we use to perceive it and that we used a specific experiment (interference) to define the wave property. There is no reason to believe that one human-invented experiment is the only one that can be used to describe electromagnetic radiation. In fact, the Einstein photoelectric effect, described next, is consistent with light being a particle.

S. Brandt

Abstract We have seen that it took about two decades to fully realize that light or, generally, electromagnetic radiation has both wave and particle properties. The final proof came with the discovery of the Compton effect (Episode 31). Even Compton himself needed years before he saw that the particle picture of radiation was unavoidable in view of the experimental evidence. Still in the year of Compton’s publications, Louis de Broglie [1] on purely theoretical grounds proposed that the particle–wave duality not only holds for radiation but also for material particles, i.e., for particles with a rest mass such as the electron.

Narkis Tzoar

Jordan Pierce, Jason Webster, Hugo Larocque +3 more

Accelerating electrons are known to radiate electromagnetic waves, a property that is central to the concept of many devices, from antennas to synchrotrons. While the electrodynamics of accelerating charged particles is well understood, the same is not true for charged matter waves: would a locally accelerating charged matter wave, like its particle counterpart, radiate? Here we construct a novel class of matter waves, angular accelerating electron waves, by superpositions of twisted electrons carrying orbital angular momentum. We study the electrodynamic behaviour of such accelerating matter waves and reveal the generation of a solenoidal magnetic field in each component, and an accelerating electron wave that does not radiate. These novel properties will have practical impact in spin flipping of qubits for quantum information processing, have been suggested for control of time dilation and length contraction, and raise fundamental questions as to the nature of wave-particle duality in the context of radiating charged matter.

Luis de la Peña, Ana Marı́a Cetto