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Are electromagnetic waves always quantized? Field quanta, exchange quanta, and the experiments that tell them apart

Jarek Duda

Published Oct 12, 2026• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Mainstream physics says yes: the electromagnetic field is a quantum system, and even the vacuum fluctuates. But “quantized” can mean two things. Either the field itself carries quanta in flight, or only matter is quantized, with discreteness appearing in what emitters and absorbers exchange, as in direct-action electrodynamics. We sort the evidence. The photoelectric effect, Compton scattering and spectra need only quantized matter. Antibunching, two-photon interference, squeezing, non-destructive photon counting, vacuum sampling, Bell tests and light-by-light scattering exclude a classical field, but none excludes quantum direct action. Two-photon interference follows from summing over emitter–absorber pairings, a permanent, with no quanta in flight. In its established constructions, direct action reproduces QED only with a complete future absorber, which Hoyle and Narlikar found impossible in open Friedmann models. Where light is never absorbed, the readings therefore differ. A history weight on free-ending photons acts as a photon chemical potential, and the microwave background’s blackbody spectrum bounds it at about 2×10⁻⁴. We classify delocalized radiation and propose tests: directional vacuum sampling toward the night sky, where QED predicts no difference and exchange a loss of half the vacuum term or more; a cavity photon with a sky-facing port; and a positron source between open and blocked directions.

DOI
10.5281/zenodo.23314126

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Mainstream physics says yes: the electromagnetic field is a quantum system, and even the vacuum fluctuates. But “quantized” can mean two things. Either the field itself carries quanta in flight, or only matter is quantized, with discreteness appearing in what emitters and absorbers exchange, as in direct-action electrodynamics. We sort the evidence. The photoelectric effect, Compton scattering and spectra need only quantized matter. Antibunching, two-photon interference, squeezing, non-destructive photon counting, vacuum sampling, Bell tests and light-by-light scattering exclude a classical field, but none excludes quantum direct action. Two-photon interference follows from summing over emitter–absorber pairings, a permanent, with no quanta in flight. In its established constructions, direct action reproduces QED only with a complete future absorber, which Hoyle and Narlikar found impossible in open Friedmann models. Where light is never absorbed, the readings therefore differ. A history weight on free-ending photons acts as a photon chemical potential, and the microwave background’s blackbody spectrum bounds it at about 2×10⁻⁴. We classify delocalized radiation and propose tests: directional vacuum sampling toward the night sky, where QED predicts no difference and exchange a loss of half the vacuum term or more; a cavity photon with a sky-facing port; and a positron source between open and blocked directions.
The photoelectric effect, the Compton effects, and now anticorrelation experiments have been claimed to prove that light consists of particles flying through a void. However the particle model is decisively falsified by the known wave qualities of electromagnetic radiation. Quantum Electrodynamics also uses spreading wave amplitudes; not flying particles. The evidence indicates that light is a wave and electrons are electromagnetic wave-structures that absorb and emit light in discrete wave-packets. These wave-quanta are emitted directionally and then spread in space in proportion to their wavelength. Their waves superposition with all other waves in space. In low intensity experiments, the waves that an electron in a photodetector absorbs come from the superpositioning of the source wave-quanta and background radiation. The importance of background radiation is evidenced by "dark counts". Treating electrons and the quanta they absorb and emit as particles when they are composed of waves is the source of all the paradoxes, unreality and confusion in Quantum Mechanics. The word "photon" should be replaced by "quantum" in the description of this particular electronic process. The conceptual model presented here explains the known phenomena without producing paradoxes and unifies quantum and classical electromagnetics.
Quantum field theory describes the particle nature of electromagnetic radiation using the "photon," but has never explained why a fundamental particle exhibits such perfect wave behavior. This paper provides a complete alternative explanation: the photoelectric effect, Compton scattering, and antibunching experiments — landmark experiments considered proof of photon particle nature — require no photon concept. Quantization is not a property of light itself, but of the discrete energy level structure governing how bound electrons emit and absorb energy. Light remains a continuous transverse wave; discreteness results from electrons as "prisoners" in atomic "cages" that can only transition between specific energy steps. Waves propagate continuously and are emitted and absorbed in quantized form — the photon is not a particle, but the name of an energy-exchange event.
Are we to accept quantization as a fundamental property of nature, the origin of which does not require or admit further investigation? To get an insight into this question we consider atomic systems as open systems, since they are by necessity in contact with the electromagnetic radiation field. This includes not only photonic radiation, but, more importantly for our purposes, the random zero-point or nonthermal radiation that pervades the Universe. The Heisenberg inequalities, atomic stability and the existence of discrete solutions are explained as a result of the permanent action of this field upon matter and the balance between mean absorbed and emitted powers in the equilibrium regime. A detailed study carried out along the years has led to the usual quantum-mechanical formalism as a powerful and revealing statistical description of the behavior of matter in the radiationless approximation, as well as to the radiative corrections of nonrelativistic QED. The theory presented gives thus a response to the question posed above, within a local, realist and objective framework: quantization appears as an emergent phenomenon due to the matter-field interaction.
Introduction Up to now the electromagnetic field has been treated as a classical field, describable by c -number functions. The great success of classical electromagnetic theory in accounting for a variety of optical phenomena, particularly those connected with wave propagation, interference and diffraction, amply justifies the classical approach. Moreover, as we have seen in the preceding chapters, in some cases the classical wave theory also gives a good account of itself in the treatment of the interaction of electromagnetic fields. For example, it is able to describe such seemingly non-classical effects as photoelectric bunching and the photo-electric counting statistics. It might almost seem that there is little justification for going beyond the domain of classical wave theory in optics. On the other hand, it can be argued that optics lies well and truly in the quantum domain, in the sense that we often encounter situations in which very few quanta or photons are present. In the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum, and at still longer wavelengths, the number of photons in each mode of the field is usually very large, and we are justified in treating the system classically. However, in the optical region the situation is usually just the opposite. As we show in Section 13.1, for light produced by practically all sources other than lasers, the average number of photons per mode is typically much less than unity.
This paper investigates the essence of photons and quanta by reexamining the bottom layer meanings of the ultraviolet catastrophe, physical calculus, Planck constant, natural constant, energy frequency relation, photoelectric effect, Compton scattering, double slit interference, and wave particle duality. The paper argues that a quantum is not a tiny particle in the universe, and a photon is not a small ball flying through space. A quantum is a discrete fact manifested when the source endpoint opens a ledger and the receiving endpoint seals it under finite space unit refresh. A photon is the discrete readout formed when an open electromagnetic ledger is issued at the source endpoint or sealed at the receiving endpoint. In the Natural Origins framework, the root of the ultraviolet catastrophe is not the blackbody itself, but the mistaken treatment of mathematical infinitesimals as physical ontology. Space units possess finite elementary length and finite elementary frequency, and the speed of light comes from relay refresh of space units. Therefore, physical processes cannot be divided without limit into zero space and zero time. Planck constant is not an isolated patch, but the manifestation of a complete cycle action ledger. The proportional relation between energy and frequency comes from the rhythm readout by which a difference ledger drives elemental cells to complete ledger opening and sealing. The photoelectric effect shows that an open ledger must cross the material unsealing threshold by single unit energy, while Compton scattering shows that the open ledger and the closed electron ledger can reallocate their accounts. The paper further states that in double slit interference, what truly passes through the double slit is not a photon ball, but an open electromagnetic ledger. The double slit boundary rephases, reorganizes, and reissues the ledger, while screen elemental cells form bright and dark fringes according to ledger alignment and cancellation. So called wave particle duality is a misunderstanding caused by mixing the propagation layer with the settlement layer. The wave belongs to the geometric unfolding of the open ledger during propagation, while the particle belongs to the discrete fact formed after endpoint elemental cell sealing. The whole paper finally forms a unified chain: discrete ledger opening at the source endpoint, open propagation through space units, boundary reissuance, and discrete ledger sealing at the receiving endpoint. The propagation ledger only transmits without retaining, elemental cell sealing generates the quantum, and endpoint readout manifests as the photon.
According to modern quantum field theory all elementary particles are quantum excitations of an underlying quantum field. In the case of the photon the underlying field is the electromagnetic field. In photon wave mechanics the photon concept was reached by a reinterpretation of the physical meaning of the free classical electromagnetic field. Such a reinterpretation does not give us a quantum theory of light quanta because the elementary quantum of action is foreign to classical physics. Although Planck’s constant does occur in the various Schro¨dinger-like wave equations we have presented in Part III it just plays the role of a multiplicative factor, see e.g., Eq. (10.36). The “justification” for bringing ~ into the formalism is the wish to make contact to the Einstein-de Broglie relations [Eqs. (10.40) and (10.41)]. In a sense one may call the light particle appearing from classical electrodynamics the classical photon.