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New magnetic component discovered in the Faraday effect

phys.org

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Re: New magnetic component discovered in the Faraday effect

#11

Post by CamperBob2 »

magphys wrote: post #3

> To quantify this influence, the team applied their model to Terbium Gallium Garnet (TGG), a crystal widely used to measure the Faraday effect. They found that the magnetic field of light accounts for about 17% of the observed rotation at visible wavelengths and up to 70% in the infrared range. Nearly 20% seems already significant, but 70%?! that's massive.

How did no one notice that before, and what else have they (we) missed?

Re: New magnetic component discovered in the Faraday effect

#12

Post by mpyne »

fragmede wrote: post #8
gucci-on-fleek wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm? The double slit experiment definitely shows that particles are waves—weird quantum waves, but still waves.

what happens when you only send a single photon down the line though?

It's worth reading about, but it's kind of wave-like even then: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment#Interfe...

It would be going too far to say it's only a wave though. It's both wave and particle.

Re: New magnetic component discovered in the Faraday effect

#13

Post by rolph »

fragmede wrote: post #8
gucci-on-fleek wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm? The double slit experiment definitely shows that particles are waves—weird quantum waves, but still waves.

what happens when you only send a single photon down the line though?

do it once, it looks like one particle.

repeat the single photon launch many times, and you see a wavelike distribution of photon strikes

Re: New magnetic component discovered in the Faraday effect

#15

Post by binary132 »

mpyne wrote: post #12
fragmede wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what happens when you only send a single photon down the line though?

It's worth reading about, but it's kind of wave-like even then: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment#Interfe... It would be going too far to say it's only a wave though. It's both wave and particle.

The way I read GGP was as contradicting the assertion that everything is just waves and not at all particles.

Re: New magnetic component discovered in the Faraday effect

#16

Post by bobbylarrybobby »

fragmede wrote: post #8
gucci-on-fleek wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm? The double slit experiment definitely shows that particles are waves—weird quantum waves, but still waves.

what happens when you only send a single photon down the line though?

It still interferes with itself, and that interference affects the pattern of detections. It's as if the photon were a wave right up until the moment of detection, at which points it's forced to “particalize” and pick a spot to be located at — but it's the amplitude of the wave it was just before detection that determines where on the detection screen the photon is likely to show up. If you send many photons through one at a time, the detections (each just a point on the screen) will fill out the expected double slit pattern.

Re: New magnetic component discovered in the Faraday effect

#19

Post by canjobear »

namanyayg wrote: post #2

We intuitively think in particles and see a world of billiard balls colliding with one another. But actually everything is merely waves and fields. There's going to be a time where humans finally reconcile the quantum with the newtonian -- and I can't wait for that day

There's no problem reconciling the quantum with the Newtonian. Quantum mechanics recovers Newtonian mechanics in the appropriate limit. The problem is reconciling the quantum and the Einsteinian.

Re: New magnetic component discovered in the Faraday effect

#20

Post by hliyan »

namanyayg wrote: post #2

We intuitively think in particles and see a world of billiard balls colliding with one another. But actually everything is merely waves and fields. There's going to be a time where humans finally reconcile the quantum with the newtonian -- and I can't wait for that day

I think neither analogy is correct. We're using macro metaphors (real world things at human time and spatial scales) to explain microscopic phenomena that may not correspond to anything that we find familiar.
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