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Phys. Rev. A 80, 032118 (2009) [9 pages]

Photon wave function and Zitterbewegung

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Zhi-Yong Wang, Cai-Dong Xiong, and Qi Qiu
School of Optoelectronic Information, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, China

Received 15 May 2009; published 25 September 2009

In terms of a photon wave function corresponding to the (1,0)+(0,1) representation of the Lorentz group, the radiation and Coulomb fields within a source-free region can be described unitedly by a Lorentz-covariant Dirac-like equation. In our formalism, the relation between the positive- and negative-energy solutions of the Dirac-like equation corresponds to the duality between the electric and magnetic fields, rather than to the usual particle-antiparticle symmetry. The Zitterbewegung (ZB) of photons is studied via the momentum vector of the electromagnetic field, which shows that only in the presence of virtual longitudinal and scalar photons, the ZB motion of photons can occur, and its vector property is described by the polarization vectors of the electromagnetic field.

© 2009 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevA.80.032118
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevA.80.032118
PACS:
03.65.Pm, 03.50.De, 12.20.−m, 31.30.J−