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So, electromagnetic field would actually be mediated by excitons and pi-tons not photons? (I always found it fishy they were called electromagnetic, photons al

So, electromagnetic field would actually be mediated by excitons and pi-tons not photons? (I always found it fishy they were called electromagnetic, photons alone have no charge, only when they actually hit something does the field appear.) That would mean during Compton scattering experiment, electric field would show discrepancy due to spontaneous formation of excitons and/or pi-tons, especially if you used coherent standing wave beams of electrons and photons and vary the phases.

perlgeek 7y ago
> So, electromagnetic field would actually be mediated by excitons and pi-tons not photons? No. This discovery doesn't change how electromagnetism works. This is a discovery a layer above electromagnetism. Quasi particles are a useful model, because you can use them more easily to explain stuff than through the fundamental forces. For example phonons (another quasi particle found in solid stat physics) explain heat transfer more easily than if you tried to solve all the wave equations from scratch. (I like to think of quasi particles as analogous to chairs, desks and other every-day objects: they don't follow separate laws of physics, so nothing fundamentally new, but talking about them instead of just wave functions of electrons and nuclei has a much greater explanatory power).
majewsky 7y ago
> I always found it fishy they were called electromagnetic, photons alone have no charge Being the particles that mediate the electromagnetic force, they don't have charge themselves, but they only interact with particles that have charges. Think of it this way: When you have a charged particle, it will produce an electric field. And when you have a moving charged particle, it produces a magnetic field. Photons are how energy gets deposited into these fields. And by interacting with those photons, other particles can draw energy from this field.
- AstralStorm 7y ago
  So moving charged particles in vacuum produce photons on their own. How do we know there are photons produced and not something else with right energy that happens to act on our sensor? Specifically, the sensors that use photoelectric effect do not react in the right wavelength, while standard radio sensors are also sensitive to charged particles. And presumably also use this exciton/pi-tons interface. How can we exclude it? Presumably fire photons from putative EM field at neutrons, observe emitted photons with wavelength change? (Essentially Compton scattering experiment with neutral particles.) My whole problem here is there's a lot of "seems as though" in those experiments... Like when you try to measure center of charge with it.

perlgeek 7y ago

> So, electromagnetic field would actually be mediated by excitons and pi-tons not photons? No. This discovery doesn't change how electromagnetism works. This is a discovery a layer above electromagnetism. Quasi particles are a useful model, because you can use them more easily to explain stuff than through the fundamental forces. For example phonons (another quasi particle found in solid stat physics) explain heat transfer more easily than if you tried to solve all the wave equations from scratch. (I like to think of quasi particles as analogous to chairs, desks and other every-day objects: they don't follow separate laws of physics, so nothing fundamentally new, but talking about them instead of just wave functions of electrons and nuclei has a much greater explanatory power).

majewsky 7y ago

> I always found it fishy they were called electromagnetic, photons alone have no charge Being the particles that mediate the electromagnetic force, they don't have charge themselves, but they only interact with particles that have charges. Think of it this way: When you have a charged particle, it will produce an electric field. And when you have a moving charged particle, it produces a magnetic field. Photons are how energy gets deposited into these fields. And by interacting with those photons, other particles can draw energy from this field.

AstralStorm 7y ago
So moving charged particles in vacuum produce photons on their own. How do we know there are photons produced and not something else with right energy that happens to act on our sensor? Specifically, the sensors that use photoelectric effect do not react in the right wavelength, while standard radio sensors are also sensitive to charged particles. And presumably also use this exciton/pi-tons interface. How can we exclude it? Presumably fire photons from putative EM field at neutrons, observe emitted photons with wavelength change? (Essentially Compton scattering experiment with neutral particles.) My whole problem here is there's a lot of "seems as though" in those experiments... Like when you try to measure center of charge with it.