Thursday, March 3, 2016

electromagnetism - Elementary Particle of Magnetic Field


If gravity - a field force - has an elementary particle, the graviton, why don't other field forces like magnetic fields have their elementary particles? I mean, why isn't there a magneton? Or, what elementary particle is associated with the magnetic field? Is there a boson for the magnetic field?


If one considers the magnetic field to be a special type of EM field with 0 amplitude electric field, then should you expect to detect a photon when you place a photon detector near a magnetic field?




Answer



The gauge boson associated with the magnetic field is the photon.


Electric and magnetic fields are in effect different views of the same thing, i.e. the electromagnetic field, and the gauge boson for the electromagnetic field is of course the photon.


Consider you are looking a static charge, which obviously has just a static electric field. But now suppose I am moving relative to that charge. This means the charge is moving relative to me, and a moving charge generates a magnetic field. So you see an electric field generated by the charge while I see a magnetic field. That's why I say electric and magnetic fields are just different views of the same thing.


Footnote: I see Lupus Liber has added an answer that goes into more detail about how the electric and magnetic fields are different views of the EM field, and I recommend reading his answer though you may find it hard going. You might also be interested to read the answers to Do photons truly exist in a physical sense or are they just a useful concept like $i = \sqrt{-1}$?.


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