physics geeking

[danaeris]

Just want to make sure I'm writing something that's true for this question...

Are there any plausible branches of research in physics currently which claim that light is something OTHER than a wave, particle, or something of dual wave/particle nature?

Edit

Also, the textbook I'm working with states something about light behaving like a particle when it interacts with matter and like a wave the rest of the time. This makes sense to me based on my understanding of QM, but I'd never heard it partitioned like that.

Does that hold true? Does light only behave as a particle when interacting with matter, and as a wave the rest of the time?

Comments

[qedrakmar.livejournal.com]

Not that I know of. While this reply isn't useful in itself, a few more like it would be sort of solid...

I've heard theories about light being weird after-effects and maybe psychological and the like, but nothing in any non-crackpot theory.

[qedrakmar.livejournal.com]

Does light only behave as a particle when interacting with matter, and as a wave the rest of the time?

No. Cases against that point would be index of refraction vs a waveform, and the 2-slit experiment.

[auros]

There's one borderline-crackpot theory that holds that what the Standard Model's "wavicles" actually are is closed flow-knots in an incompressible fluid aether; the fluidity is what explains the wavelike properties. Apparently this is also nicely consistent with String Theory; flow knots can be chained together and remain stable, and this explains a bunch of quantization issues from ST. I don't completely understand it, but one of the Alternate View columnists at Analog has written a couple articles on the topic.

[feylike.livejournal.com]

i suppose there is a plausible yet unusual branch of physics that involves the premise that all of spacetime is computable, e.g., a cellular automaton or something... zuse / fredkin / wolfram, etc. i think the latest iteration of such theories is that spacetime is a discrete network of nodes, and the edges are planck time/length in size. the dynamics of physics all arise from the changes in the discrete network. some of these theories even have a reasonable explanation of the odd "FTL transmission of information" exhibited by certain types of entangled particles.

anyway, my understanding is that the current "accepted" view of the dual nature of light and subatomic particles is that they are neither wave nor particle, but simultaneously have aspects of both. which aspect you observe depends on what kind of experiment you construct. if you really want to get your brain in a knot, i think dirac said that a particle only ever interferes with itself.

at a quantum scale, everything has wave nature. of course, as the energies involved go up, particles act more like "simple" particles and less like waves. see also de broglie wavelength... classical newtonian physics is the limit behavior of quantum physics as wavelength approaches zero.

Light as wave in matter

[sirreality.livejournal.com]

Most nonlinear optics treats light as wavelike. All that stuff requires interaction with matter, since the nonlinearities arise from nonlinear susceptibilities of the medium.

I think the upshot is that it's easier to use like with like: nonlinear susceptibilities are best measured and expressed as bulk, continuous properties. Hence, it's easier to use a wave representation. If you are trying to deal with atoms, phonons, or particles, it's easier to treat light as particles, because they fit into the discrete framework.