Comments on Why is it forbidden for two photons to turn into one?
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Why is it forbidden for two photons to turn into one?
In the context of quantum field theory, why is it impossible for two photons (or other massless bosons like gluons) to collide and produce a single photon? This kind of a process is supposed to be forbidden by momentum conservation, but it was not immediately obvious to me why this is.
Imagine two equivalent (e.g. same frequency) photons colliding with each other head-on. The linear momentum of the syste …
2y ago
Think about how that is supposed to work. It seems you want two photons to somehow combine into a single photon and not …
2y ago
Olin and Derek have covered the biggest part of this: the combination of energy and momentum conservation rules out the …
11mo ago
Suppose you have two photons A and B on an x, y plane: Photon A is at (-20, 9) and traveling towards (20, 0). Phot …
9mo ago
With Maxwell's equations being linear and superposition working, isn't there no mechanism (in free space) for photons to …
1mo ago
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With Maxwell's equations being linear and superposition working, isn't there no mechanism (in free space) for photons to interact? (Well, there's gravity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geon_(physics))
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