A position and a time for the photon
| dc.creator | Leon, J. | |
| dc.date | 2003-09-04 | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2026-07-07T06:07:46Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2026-07-07T06:07:46Z | |
| dc.description | This paper gives a constructive answer to the question whether photon states can contain or not, and to what extent, the readings of rulers and clocks. The paper first shows explicitly that, along with the momentum representation, there is room in the one photon Hilbert space for an alternative position representation. This is made possible by the existence of a self-adjoint, involutive, position operator conjugate to the momentum operator (due to M. Hawton). Position and momenta are shown to satisfy the Heisenberg-Weyl quantization rules in the helicity basis, which is analyzed anew from this point of view. The paper then turns to the photon's time of arrival. By picking an appropriate photon Hamiltonian - using Maxwell equations as the photon Schroedinger equation - a conjugate time of arrival operator is built. Its interpretation, including the probability densities for the instant of arrival (at arbitrary points of 3-D space) of photon states with different helicities coming from arbitrary places, is discussed. | |
| dc.description | 24 pages, no figures | |
| dc.identifier | https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0309049 | |
| dc.identifier | http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0309049 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/91407 | |
| dc.subject | Quantum Physics | |
| dc.title | A position and a time for the photon | |
| dc.type | text |