Photon mass mechanism

It can be seen that the photon mass is carried by, 4Vl 1 and Av(2 but not by 4Vl 1 . This result is also obtained by a different route using the Higgs mechanism in Ref. 42, and is also consistent with the fact that the mass associated with 4Vl 3 corresponds with the superheavy boson inferred by Crowell [42], reviewed in... 

But now, if there is a ample evidence of nonzero photon mass, the question of absorption or emission amplitudes for longitudinal photon has to be answered in a consistent manner. Goldhaber and Nieto [49] showed that these are suppressed in comparison with their transverse counterparts by a factor The corresponding rates and cross sections are suppressed by the square of this factor. The quantum mechanical matrix element for ordinary transverse photon is given by Tf(x,y) = (f JX)y i) for a photon-induced transition to an arbitrary state/, where i is the initial target state. The corresponding matrix for a longitudinal photon is... 

B) The multiphoton excitation of electronic levels of atoms and molecules with visible or UV radiation generally leads to ionization. The mechanism is generally a combination of direct, Goeppert-Mayer, and quasi-resonant stepwise processes. Since ionization often requires only two or tln-ee photons, this type of multiphoton excitation is used for spectroscopic purposes in combination with mass-spectrometric detection of ions. 

Historical Background.—Relativistic quantum mechanics had its beginning in 1900 with Planck s formulation of the law of black body radiation. Perhaps its inception should be attributed more accurately to Einstein (1905) who ascribed to electromagnetic radiation a corpuscular character the photons. He endowed the photons with an energy and momentum hv and hv/c, respectively, if the frequency of the radiation is v. These assignments of energy and momentum for these zero rest mass particles were consistent with the postulates of relativity. It is to be noted that zero rest mass particles can only be understood within the framework of relativistic dynamics. 

It is seen that the acquisition of mass by the photon is the result of an equation of superconductivity, and this is, of course, the basis of spontaneous symmetry breaking and the Higgs mechanism (Section XIV). Beltrami equations account for all these phenomena, and are foundational in nature. Note that the London equation (919) is not gauge-invariant on the U(l) level because aphysical gauge-invariant current is proportional to the vector potential, which, in the received view, is gauge-noninvariant. This is another flaw of U(l) electrodynamics in the... 

From the foregoing, mass cannot continuously exist as mass mass rigorously exists only at a single point in time, and never again. It only appears to exist in time because of the reactions in Eqs. (9) and (10) above. Rigorously, a mass does not really travel through time continuously per se, but proceeds with an overall serial change mechanism, driven by its total virtual and observable photon interactions, as... 

The modern point of view is that, for every particle that exists, there is a corresponding field with wave properties. In the development of this viewpoint, the particle aspects of electrons and nuclei were evident at the beginning and the field or wave aspects were found later (this was the development of quantum mechanics). In contrast, the wave aspects of the photon were understood first (this was the classical electromagnetic theory of Maxwell) and its particle aspects only discovered later, From this modern viewpoint, the photon is the particle corresponding to the electromagnetic field. It is a particle with zero rest mass and spin one. 

The most interesting example of a quantum mechanical object is the photon itself. By using the relativistic and quantum mechanical definition of the photon energy, we can obtain a quantitative formulation of the concepts just described. The relativistic form of the total energy of a particle with rest mass m and momentum p is ... 

It is necessary to develop a dynamic theory to describe the wave character of material particles, In the case of particles with mass, one has the possibility of comparing their kinetic energies with their rest masses, If the kinetic energy is small compared to rest energy, then we can formulate a nonrelativistic theory. However, with the photon there exists no possibility for the formulation of a nonrelativistic theory. There are important advantages m entering quantum mechanics via the photon ... 

The complications just described can be minimized if there is greater selectivity in the ionization process, as is sometime possible when photoionization is used as the excitation mechanism. Because the ionization energy can be more precisely controlled, it is possible in selected cases to produce only the desired reactant-ion species, or at least to minimize production of other ions. As already noted in the earlier section on formation of excited ions, it is also possible to populate specific internal-energy states of some reactant ions by using a photoionization source. One of the earliest photoionization mass spectrometers used to study interaction of internally excited ions with neutrals was that constructed by Chupka et al.91 Such apparatuses typically incorporate a photon source (either a line or a continuum source) and an optical monochromator, which are coupled to the reaction chamber. Various types of mass analyzer, including sector type, time-of-flight (TOF), and quadrupole mass filters, have been used with these apparatuses. Chupka has described the basic instrumental configuration in some detail.854 Photoionization mass spectrometers employed to study interactions of excited ions with neutral species have also been constructed in several other laboratories.80,1144,142,143 The apparatus recently developed by LeBreton et al.80 is illustrated schematically in Fig. 7 and is typical of such instrumentation. 

J. P. Vigier, Evidence for non-zero mass photons associated with a vacuum-induced dissipative red-shift mechanism, IEEE Trans. Plasma Sci. 18(1), 64—72 (1990). 

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