Assigning a specific shape to a photon is a complicated task, because these massless elementary particles exhibit wave-particle duality, a curious feature of the objects that inhabit the quantum realm, which is governed by constant uncertainties.
This means that scientists think that photons behave like particles and like waves, depending on how you observe them. Furthermore, the Photons are also understood as excitations in an electromagnetic field, or as a discrete energy wave.
In short, they are very difficult to pin down and, to complicate matters even more, There are infinite ways light can interact with its environment and with the atoms that emit them.
But now, a team of scientists has published a study that describes the shape of a single photonthe smallest form of energy possible in an electromagnetic field we commonly know as light.
The study, published in Physical Review Letters, goes into extreme detail to predict how these light quanta are emitted by atoms and defined by their environment. There is unlimited possibilities of how those interactions could develop, But researchers say they have developed a practical method to predict them.
“Our calculations allowed us to turn a seemingly insoluble problem into something that can be calculated,” explains Benjamin Yuen, a physicist at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, in a statement. And, almost as a byproduct of the model, We were able to produce this image of a photon, something that had not been seen before in physics”.
According to Yuen’s team, the advantage of modeling a photon in this way is that it can accurately describe how tiny particles travel toward a distant region of the electromagnetic field surrounding an object, known as the far field. Previous methods had a disconnect between the near field and the far field, which provided an incomplete picture of light systems at the quantum level.
“This work helps us increase our understanding of the exchange of energy between light and matter, and secondly to better understand how light radiates towards its near and far environment – concludes Yuen -. Previously, Much of this information was thought to be just ‘noise’, but there is so much information within it. that now we can understand and use it.”
This new understanding has very practical implications. For quantum physicists and materials scientists, it could transform the development of nano-optical technology, leading to “improved photovoltaic power cells, or quantum computing and also advances in communications technology”says the study. And, if that were not enough, the shape of a photon is very attractive.