In articles "Quantum, what it consists of" и "Quantum of energy, how it arranget and how it moves" we examined the device of a quantum of energy. And we saw that the concept of a photon is closely connected with the concept of a quantum. In classical science, there is still no clear concept of what a photon is and what a quantum is. This is the same? Or are they different concepts? Or is there some correlation between them? Everyone is bashfully using this or that concept, they feel that something is wrong here, but they do not exacerbate this issue. But there is a clear dividing line between the two.
Quantum is defined as the smallest fixed amount of energy. Nature loves to quantize everything. This principle also applies to the amount of energy.
But how to get a portion of energy larger than it contains in a single quantum? It's very simple: you need to collect a certain number of small portions, that is, quanta of energy, in one block. Something like how a of water, a glass of water, a pond and so on can be drawn from water molecules.
You can, of course, gain any amount of energy with single quanta, but nature acted a little differently.
You can, of course, gain any amount of energy with single quanta, but nature acted a little differently.
Such groups of quanta can be called photons, more precisely, elementary photons.
The energy of such an elementary photon will depend on the amount of quanta it contains. For this reason, some photons can cause a photoeffect, while others cannot, no matter how often they follow each other, that is, no matter how intense their flux is.
When a double energy quantum is generated, no quantum modification occurs, and the energy of this formation, a double quantum (8 beads) or, if you like, a photon, will be strictly doubled by the radiation of two single minimal quanta. According to our graph, this will look like a photon containing 4 quanta (Fig. 1).
These elementary photons are generated by single electrons. The more force we apply to the electron, the more energy the photon will be emitted, that is, the more waves (quanta) will be in it, and the longer it will be.
Consider the operation of a conventional LC circuit in a transmitter. With an external force from the power supply, we force electrons to move from one capacitor plate to another, and then back, etc. An external force acts on electrons: forces of mutual repulsion, magnetic forces. Different forces act on each electron, but there is a generally expressed direction: from plate to plate. Not all electrons travel this path. Those electrons that run this entire path, having received the greatest acceleration, they generate the longest elementary photons with the highest energy (the sum of single quanta). Electrons that have made a shorter path will emit elementary photons of lower energy. Together, we observe these elementary photons in the form of a radio wave or radio photon. Beams, bundles of elementary photons are obtained. Just like we observe a wave on water, not noticing the irregularities from the molecules that make up the wave.
This is approximately how the content of a photon appears to the author (Fig. 2).
Such groups of elementary photons make up any kind of radiation. If the elementary photons in the group are the shortest, then this is the relic radiation. Such a group, of course, can be called a relict radiation quantum, but it will be a quantum in relation to the relict radiation. In relation to neutrinos, this is a group of quanta, and in relation to, for example, radiation of the visible spectrum, this is a part of a photon of the visible spectrum. For this reason, it is still more convenient to call such a group of elementary photons a photon of such and such radiation. The energy of a photon depends on the sum of the energies of all elementary photons that make up a given photon. And the radiation power will depend on the power of the photons and the repetition rate of these photons. The repetition rate of these groups depends on the generation mode.
The form of the photon depicted in the figure is purely conditional. We are used to a sine wave, here is the envelope and is selected as a sine wave. Naturally, in a group or wave there can be more triple photons, or double ones, and they can be located in different ways relative to the largest photon, which, or rather which, determine the type of radiation. Electrons can be included in the radiation process at different times. That is, photons have the ability to shift relative to each other, but it is assumed that this shift can only be discrete by the amount of a quantum.
The shape of the photon emitted by the laser should be something like the one shown in Fig. 3.
All electrons of the working fluid of the laser are in approximately the same state, therefore they change their speed regime in the same way and, due to this, emit approximately the same energy of elementary photons. And the flux of such photons has a great advantage over the photon shown in Fig. 2. Elementary photons in a flashlight beam have different energies. The probability that some of them will be absorbed by molecules of the propagation medium, in particular air, is quite high and therefore the beam quickly loses its intensity, that is, it does not shine too far. In a laser beam, elementary photons are almost the same, and therefore, if there are even a lot of resonant particles for such elementary photons in the propagation medium, then these particles will absorb a small part of such photons and go out of the game. The path for subsequent elementary photons will be clear, and the beam will propagate much further without fading or scattering.
Thus, a photon can be defined as follows.
Photon is a form of organizing the combination of quanta into one or another type of electromagnetic radiation.
Humanity mainly works with photons, shown in Figures 2 and 3. These are almost all types of electromagnetic radiation. We can measure and generate sequences of such packets. Nature works with elementary photons. All chemical reactions mainly occur as a result of the emission and absorption of elementary photons or a small amount of elementary photons. Usually it is some kind of individual working photon and an additional catalytic photon to it. This is especially common in biology. The sums of photons trigger all biological reactions up to the holographic picture of the morphology of living organisms.
When scientists try to measure any electric current or potential in a living organism, they measure the fluxes of photons in the form of solitons, shown in Figure 2. In them, elementary photons refer to various molecular processes that occur under the influence of the experimenter on the organism. And in order to understand, for example, the process of the emergence and growth of cancer cells in the lungs, it is necessary to single out exactly that stream of elementary streams that triggers the transcription of those proteins in the lung cells that are not characteristic of lung tissues.
It is natural to work with elementary, especially single, photons, we still cannot work and do not even understand that it is necessary.