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I would add that photons, like all other particles, don't have identity. They're 'ripples' in the electromagnetic field; if you cancel them out, then you don't
by Filligree 10y ago
I would add that photons, like all other particles, don't have identity. They're 'ripples' in the electromagnetic field; if you cancel them out, then you don't get a ghost photon. You just get no photon.
- dogma1138 10y ago>cancel them out Do you mean destructive interference? because the photons don't go anywhere, they don't disappear, the energy of the wave function and hence the photons remains the same. Other than a photon being absorbed there is no way to "cancel out" a photon, you also don't really have a way to cancel out light with destructive interference because some where else there will be a constructive interference, if we could just "cancel out" light we would have cloaking devices by now ;)
- amluto 10y ago> Do you mean destructive interference? because the photons don't go anywhere, they don't disappear, the energy of the wave function and hence the photons remains the same. Not quite. If both waves are plane waves, the interference could be destructive everywhere or, depending on the setup, destructive everywhere except between your sources. If you calculate the time-averaged power needed to source the waves, it'll sum to zero. And there are no photons in the far field.
- dogma1138 10y agoYes quite, plane waves physically don't exist in reality they are a mathematical idealization. Again you can't make an "anti laser".