Photon polarization

rdf:langString Photon polarization

rdf:langString June 2015

rdf:langString August 2016

rdf:langString July 2014

rdf:langString I didn't see where Maxwell's equations "forced a restructuring of Newtonian mechanics" in the previous paragraphs. In the following, yes, but that has nothing to do with quantum mechanics or the purpose of the article.

rdf:langString These rules are expressed much too loosely. What are "two successive probabilities" in scientific terms? What sort of statements, states, or sets of inequalities qualify as "possibilities"? What is a "way"? There seem to be a lot of unstated heuristics at work here, and the reader is left with the impression that QM is a collection of rules-of-thumb that have not been formalized.

rdf:langString The word legal is not generally used in formal scientific writing.

rdf:langString yes

rdf:langString Photon polarization is the quantum mechanical description of the classical polarized sinusoidal plane electromagnetic wave. An individual photoncan be described as having right or left circular polarization, or a superposition of the two. Equivalently, a photon can be described as having horizontal or vertical linear polarization, or a superposition of the two. The description of photon polarization contains many of the physical concepts and much of the mathematical machinery of more involved quantum descriptions, such as the quantum mechanics of an electron in a potential well. Polarization is an example of a qubit degree of freedom, which forms a fundamental basis for an understanding of more complicated quantum phenomena. Much of the mathematical machinery of quantum mechanics, such as state vectors, probability amplitudes, unitary operators, and Hermitian operators, emerge naturally from the classical Maxwell's equations in the description. The quantum polarization state vector for the photon, for instance, is identical with the Jones vector, usually used to describe the polarization of a classical wave. Unitary operators emerge from the classical requirement of the conservation of energy of a classical wave propagating through lossless media that alter the polarization state of the wave. Hermitian operators then follow for infinitesimal transformations of a classical polarization state. Many of the implications of the mathematical machinery are easily verified experimentally. In fact, many of the experiments can be performed with polaroid sunglass lenses. The connection with quantum mechanics is made through the identification of a minimum packet size, called a photon, for energy in the electromagnetic field. The identification is based on the theories of Planck and the interpretation of those theories by Einstein. The correspondence principle then allows the identification of momentum and angular momentum (called spin), as well as energy, with the photon.

rdf:langString Sinusoidal plane-wave solutions of the electromagnetic wave equation