On Wed, 25 Jul 2001, Jim Choate wrote:
The incident photons strike the mirror.
A current is induced.
That current is electrons moving in a resistor. Making heat, losing energy. Note, we are NOT talking about photons here but J/C.
That current re-emits photons that retain both frequency and temporal/time related coherence (see Maxwell's Equations for more detail). However, the total number of photons MUST be reduced from the incident beam. This also means the incident photons can not be the same as the emitted photons.
No. The electromagnetic field, as described by Maxwell's equations, is a statistical abstraction arising out of quantum electrodynamics, with strict limits on its applicability. When you try to deal with individual photons, you're going outside these limits, just as surely as you would be going outside the limits of classical thermodynamics if you e.g. tried to argue from the 2nd law in a simple enough quantum system like an isolated electron. The classical ED only gets you statistical results, and as such does not allow you to reason about the behavior of individual quanta. Reflection of light in a mirror happens at a scale beyond the reach of classical electrodynamics. The only thing that happens is that some photons are converted to heat, while others scatter as-is. (Besides, the above stuff is nonsense at its face, as one can clearly see from the fact that insulators can be reflective, and that an incident magnetic field does not visibly affect the reflectance of a conductive mirror.) Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy, mailto:decoy@iki.fi, gsm: +358-50-5756111 student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front