Friday, May 15, 2015

special relativity - Can you give a photon mass?



I know this may sound weird. But could a photon be given mass? And if so what would the effects be?



Answer




A "photon" propagating in an optical medium can be ascribed a nonzero rest mass. I put "photon" in quotes because light in a medium is not, strictly speaking, pure photons but a quantum superposition of excited electromagnetic field and matter quantum states.


In a medium with refractive index $n=1.5$, my calculation here reckons the rest mass of a quantum of this superposition to be:


$$m_0 = \frac{E}{c^2}\sqrt{1-\frac{1}{n^2}}$$


For $n=1.5$ (common glasses like window panes or N-BK7 - microscope slide glass) at $\lambda = 500\rm\,nm$, we get, from $E=h\,c/\lambda$, $m_0=3.3\times 10^{-36}{\rm kg}$ or about 3.6 millionths of an electron mass.


This take on your question is perhaps a little different from what your original question asks for, and is not to be confused with the assignment of a rest mass to the "pure photon" as discussed in the other answers. The assignment of nonzero rest mass to the photon replaces Maxwell's equations with the Proca equation, whose most "startling" characteristic is screening, i.e. photon fields would dwindle exponentially with distance from their sources and light as we know it could not propagate through the universe.


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