5 ms·

Photons travelling through fiber are still traveling at 300,000 km/s. It's just that they bounce of walls making their path longer and much more importantly tha

by comboy 9y ago

Photons travelling through fiber are still traveling at 300,000 km/s. It's just that they bounce of walls making their path longer and much more importantly than that, the medium is denser. Speed of light through glass is ~2e5 km/s, but photons are still travelling at 3e5 km/s. It's just that they hit atoms, energy gets absorbed and re emitted and so on. But photons always move at 3e5 km/s. The speed of light, that is the speed of a photon, is a constant.

mjburgess 9y ago
That's not correct, but a widely held view. The speed differs to the properties of the EM field in these materials, not due to absorption.
- kgwgk 9y ago
  How do you explain the properties of the EM field in different materials in terms of photons, electrons, etc?
  - mjburgess 9y ago
    How do you explain the magnetic and dielectric constants of free space? With great difficulty. cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permittivity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permittivity
    - kgwgk 9y ago
      Edit: maybe I didn't understand what is the "incorrect, but widely held view" you talked about.
      - mjburgess 9y ago
        Yes, the electronic structure of a crystalline material. That is one dimension of the "optical dielectric function" which is to do with the directionality of variation. Light is the motion of magnetic and electric fields, the "ease" of this motion is affected by a variety of factors. The speed of light depends not only on electric, but also magnetic field formation. And of each kind, there are a variety factors. The vacuum itself resits electromagnetic motion to some degree. I was observing that it isnt the case that light simply has one speed, the field in which it travels itself is damped.
        kgwgk 9y ago
        Ok, probably you will agree with the "Speed of light through glass is ~2e5 km/s, but photons are still travelling at 3e5 km/s." I guess you object to the "The speed of light, that is the speed of a photon, is a constant" part, where he identifies "light" with "photons".
        comboy 9y ago
        Wow, I've been afk for a day and you answered so many comments, thank you, I've learned something. And yes, I should have left the speed of light out of the last sentence, my bad.
        kgwgk 9y ago
        To be fair, the speed of a free photon is c but when the photon is interacting it may not make sense to keep talking about its intrinsic speed. In any case, I feel objections to what you said should come from a “better” QED description and not from a “lower-level” classical description.
ridgeguy 9y ago
Path length differs from velocity. The speed of light in a medium varies according to the refractive index of the medium. [1] Free space (vacuum) has an RI of 1.0. Photons move fastest in free space, about 300,000km/sec. Water has an RI of ~1.33, meaning photons move through water at about 1/1.33, or about 75% of the free space velocity of light. RI of optical fiber is often ~1.4. So while there may be path length increase due to off-axis propagation and bouncing, the actual photon speed in the medium is 1/1.4, or about 71% of the 300,000km/sec speed of light in vacuum. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refractive_index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refractive_index
- kgwgk 9y ago
  > The speed of light in a medium varies according to the refractive index of the medium. Sure, as he said "Speed of light through glass is ~2e5 km/s" > Water has an RI of ~1.33, meaning photons move through water at about 1/1.33, Not really. Something moves at this lower speed, but it's not the photons.
hpcjoe 9y ago
Well ... no. The value of c is specific to the medium. In "empty" space, c is the constant we know and love, and is related to the permittivity and dielectric constant of the vacuum. Specifically with a classical E-M model, when you are in a material different than vacuum, the differing dielectric and permittivity of the material are (in a macroscopic sense) what lead to the reduced c*. This is encapsulated in the form of the index of refraction, which is effectively the ratio of velocities between vacuum and in-bulk. At a microscopic E-M quantum level, you can argue about vacuum state differences between physical vacuum and in-bulk. Indeed, in a physical vacuum, you have virtual pair creation/destruction, virtual photons, etc. In bulk, you may have that, but you also have the bulk electronic and physical structure to work with, as well as different fields and field structures.
- kgwgk 9y ago
  > The value of c is specific to the medium. c is the speed of light in vacuum, a universal constant that obviously doesn't depend on the medium.
  - whatshisface 9y ago
    Sometimes people write c with subscripts, so I've seen the notation he's using before. It sounds reasonable enough to me. Edit: To be specific, in this context c was used for the speed of light in the medium and c_0 for the speed of light in vacuum. (To match epsilon and epsilon_0).
    - kgwgk 9y ago
      Have you seen c being used to refer to something else than the speed of light in vacuum in a discussion about the interaction of photons with matter? Edit: yes, I know. But using c in that way is absolutely non-standard in physics (v is used instead). Actually he later used c* for the speed of light in a medium, so he knows what c is.
javajosh 9y ago
Nope. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permittivity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permittivity. But basically the material resists the formation of an electric field, which means the photons actually travel slower.
- kgwgk 9y ago
  No, they don't.
kgwgk 9y ago
It seems your opinion is not very popular around here, looking at how many classical counter-arguments are given to your (necessarily imperfect) quantum mechanics description. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon#Photons_in_matter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon#Photons_in_matter Light that travels through transparent matter does so at a lower speed than c, the speed of light in a vacuum. [...] The factor by which the speed is decreased is called the refractive index of the material. In a classical wave picture, the slowing can be explained by the light inducing electric polarization in the matter, the polarized matter radiating new light, and that new light interfering with the original light wave to form a delayed wave. In a particle picture, the slowing can instead be described as a blending of the photon with quantum excitations of the matter to produce quasi-particles known as polariton (other quasi-particles are phonons and excitons); this polariton has a nonzero effective mass, which means that it cannot travel at c.
smoyer 9y ago
You might want to look into the theory behind fiber optics a bit ... I left out the deviation due to path length (bouncing) as that obviously has a lot of variations (including wavelength). I've also ignored SBS and other unrelated sources of scatter. It's pretty common to hear people refer to the "speed-of-light in a vacuum". If the speed of light were a constant, why would you need to specify the vacuum? It's also worth noting that electrons don't move through conductors at the speed-of-light either - in the cable television industry, the best hard-line coaxial cable was about 0.85.
- kgwgk 9y ago
  Speed of light != Speed of photons (in general) Speed of a photon = Speed of light in vacuum
- kgwgk 9y ago
  > electrons don't move through conductors at the speed-of-light either The drift velocity of electrons through conductors is many orders of magnitude lower than the speed of light (~mm/s).

by comboy 9y ago

mjburgess 9y ago

That's not correct, but a widely held view. The speed differs to the properties of the EM field in these materials, not due to absorption.

kgwgk 9y ago
How do you explain the properties of the EM field in different materials in terms of photons, electrons, etc?
- mjburgess 9y ago
  How do you explain the magnetic and dielectric constants of free space? With great difficulty. cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permittivity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permittivity
  - kgwgk 9y ago
    Edit: maybe I didn't understand what is the "incorrect, but widely held view" you talked about.
    - mjburgess 9y ago
      Yes, the electronic structure of a crystalline material. That is one dimension of the "optical dielectric function" which is to do with the directionality of variation. Light is the motion of magnetic and electric fields, the "ease" of this motion is affected by a variety of factors. The speed of light depends not only on electric, but also magnetic field formation. And of each kind, there are a variety factors. The vacuum itself resits electromagnetic motion to some degree. I was observing that it isnt the case that light simply has one speed, the field in which it travels itself is damped.
      - kgwgk 9y ago
        Ok, probably you will agree with the "Speed of light through glass is ~2e5 km/s, but photons are still travelling at 3e5 km/s." I guess you object to the "The speed of light, that is the speed of a photon, is a constant" part, where he identifies "light" with "photons".
        comboy 9y ago
        Wow, I've been afk for a day and you answered so many comments, thank you, I've learned something. And yes, I should have left the speed of light out of the last sentence, my bad.
        kgwgk 9y ago
        To be fair, the speed of a free photon is c but when the photon is interacting it may not make sense to keep talking about its intrinsic speed. In any case, I feel objections to what you said should come from a “better” QED description and not from a “lower-level” classical description.

ridgeguy 9y ago

Path length differs from velocity. The speed of light in a medium varies according to the refractive index of the medium. [1] Free space (vacuum) has an RI of 1.0. Photons move fastest in free space, about 300,000km/sec. Water has an RI of ~1.33, meaning photons move through water at about 1/1.33, or about 75% of the free space velocity of light. RI of optical fiber is often ~1.4. So while there may be path length increase due to off-axis propagation and bouncing, the actual photon speed in the medium is 1/1.4, or about 71% of the 300,000km/sec speed of light in vacuum. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refractive_index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refractive_index

kgwgk 9y ago
> The speed of light in a medium varies according to the refractive index of the medium. Sure, as he said "Speed of light through glass is ~2e5 km/s" > Water has an RI of ~1.33, meaning photons move through water at about 1/1.33, Not really. Something moves at this lower speed, but it's not the photons.

hpcjoe 9y ago

Well ... no. The value of c is specific to the medium. In "empty" space, c is the constant we know and love, and is related to the permittivity and dielectric constant of the vacuum. Specifically with a classical E-M model, when you are in a material different than vacuum, the differing dielectric and permittivity of the material are (in a macroscopic sense) what lead to the reduced c*. This is encapsulated in the form of the index of refraction, which is effectively the ratio of velocities between vacuum and in-bulk. At a microscopic E-M quantum level, you can argue about vacuum state differences between physical vacuum and in-bulk. Indeed, in a physical vacuum, you have virtual pair creation/destruction, virtual photons, etc. In bulk, you may have that, but you also have the bulk electronic and physical structure to work with, as well as different fields and field structures.

kgwgk 9y ago
> The value of c is specific to the medium. c is the speed of light in vacuum, a universal constant that obviously doesn't depend on the medium.
- whatshisface 9y ago
  Sometimes people write c with subscripts, so I've seen the notation he's using before. It sounds reasonable enough to me. Edit: To be specific, in this context c was used for the speed of light in the medium and c_0 for the speed of light in vacuum. (To match epsilon and epsilon_0).
  - kgwgk 9y ago
    Have you seen c being used to refer to something else than the speed of light in vacuum in a discussion about the interaction of photons with matter? Edit: yes, I know. But using c in that way is absolutely non-standard in physics (v is used instead). Actually he later used c* for the speed of light in a medium, so he knows what c is.

javajosh 9y ago

Nope. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permittivity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permittivity. But basically the material resists the formation of an electric field, which means the photons actually travel slower.

kgwgk 9y ago
No, they don't.

kgwgk 9y ago

It seems your opinion is not very popular around here, looking at how many classical counter-arguments are given to your (necessarily imperfect) quantum mechanics description. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon#Photons_in_matter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon#Photons_in_matter Light that travels through transparent matter does so at a lower speed than c, the speed of light in a vacuum. [...] The factor by which the speed is decreased is called the refractive index of the material. In a classical wave picture, the slowing can be explained by the light inducing electric polarization in the matter, the polarized matter radiating new light, and that new light interfering with the original light wave to form a delayed wave. In a particle picture, the slowing can instead be described as a blending of the photon with quantum excitations of the matter to produce quasi-particles known as polariton (other quasi-particles are phonons and excitons); this polariton has a nonzero effective mass, which means that it cannot travel at c.

smoyer 9y ago

You might want to look into the theory behind fiber optics a bit ... I left out the deviation due to path length (bouncing) as that obviously has a lot of variations (including wavelength). I've also ignored SBS and other unrelated sources of scatter. It's pretty common to hear people refer to the "speed-of-light in a vacuum". If the speed of light were a constant, why would you need to specify the vacuum? It's also worth noting that electrons don't move through conductors at the speed-of-light either - in the cable television industry, the best hard-line coaxial cable was about 0.85.

kgwgk 9y ago
Speed of light != Speed of photons (in general) Speed of a photon = Speed of light in vacuum
kgwgk 9y ago
> electrons don't move through conductors at the speed-of-light either The drift velocity of electrons through conductors is many orders of magnitude lower than the speed of light (~mm/s).