4 ms·

Then how can the average amplitude be zero? If at any point the amplitude is nonzero, it must be positive (as it is the absolute value of the difference), thus

• ben_w 6y ago
  IIRC the minimum is supposed to be 0.5 photons of any given wavelength. This is what gets called “zero point energy”. Except there are ways to go below that, like a Casimir cavity. I find these things confusing because when people explain Casimir cavities they never bother to say why the justification for zero point energy existing in the first place doesn’t apply within the cavity.
• fsh 6y ago
  Indeed this is not possible for a classical wave. However, in a quantum description there exists a so-called "vacuum state" for which the expectation value of the electric field operator vanishes at all times, but the expectation value of the square of this operator does not. In the classical approximation of quantum optics, the expectation value of the electric field operator corresponds to the amplitude of the classical wave, whereas the expectation value of the square of the electric field operator corresponds to so-called shot (or quantum) noise on the classical wave. Of course in nature there is no such thing as a "classical wave", so this description has to break down at some point. This is the case for vacuum fluctuations which simply do not have a classical explanation.
  • bollu 6y ago
    Does this have to do with the fact that the wave is complex-valued?