Can a photon be converted to mass?
Light is composed of photons, so we could ask if the photon has mass. The answer is then definitely “no”: the photon is a massless particle. Energy, they say, is equivalent to mass according to Einstein’s famous formula E = mc2. They also say that a photon has momentum, and momentum p is related to mass m by p = mv.
How do photons have no mass?
In short, the special theory of relativity predicts that photons do not have mass simply because they travel at the speed of light. This is also backed up by the theory of quantum electrodynamics, which predicts photons to cannot have mass as a result of gauge symmetries and the Higgs mechanism.
What happens when you compress photons?
Microscopically, by compressing the chamber, we are making the wavelengths of the supported modes shorter, and thus the frequency and energy of the photons in the chamber will increase. So either way, the internal energy of the photon gas will go up.
What is the mass of 1 photon?
According to Electromagnetic theory the rest mass of light wave is zero, but there are so many theoretical and experimental approaches which reveal that it is very small [1], [13], [23], [24], [25], [26], [27]. De-Broglie assumed that the rest mass of photon is about 10 – 54 kg ( 5.610 × 10 – 25 MeV c – 2 ) [1].
Can we convert energy to mass?
Energy can be converted into mass, a single photon can be converted to en electron positron pair in theory. The reverse is not always possible because the electromagnetic energy is not equivalent to mass.
How can a photon have momentum if it has no mass?
This is given as a solution to the problem of only massive objects being affected by gravity. However, momentum is the product of mass and velocity, so, by this definition, massless photons cannot have momentum.
Can a photon turn into an electron?
For example, a photon can turn into an electron and an anti-electron. If two photons head towards each other and they both turn into electron/anti-electron pairs at about the same time, then these particles can interact. A photon comes from the left of the diagram and decays into an electron and an anti-electron.
What gives a particle mass?
The strong force and you The Higgs field gives mass to fundamental particles—the electrons, quarks and other building blocks that cannot be broken into smaller parts. The energy of this interaction between quarks and gluons is what gives protons and neutrons their mass.
Can mass be created?
The law implies that mass can neither be created nor destroyed, although it may be rearranged in space, or the entities associated with it may be changed in form. For example, in chemical reactions, the mass of the chemical components before the reaction is equal to the mass of the components after the reaction.
How are photons different from other particles that do not have mass?
Gordon’s Theory of Everything differentiates particle that contain mass with particles that do not contain mass through the hierarchy of energy states. Physicists know of two energy states: the energy of photons that are proportional to c^1 and the energy of particles containing mass that is proportional to c^2.
What happens when a photon has a non-zero rest mass?
A non-zero rest mass would introduce a small damping factor in the inverse square Coulomb law of electrostatic forces. That means the electrostatic force would be weaker over very large distances. Likewise, the behavior of static magnetic fields would be modified.
Is there an upper limit to the mass of a photon?
An upper limit to the photon mass can be inferred through satellite measurements of planetary magnetic fields. The Charge Composition Explorer spacecraft was used to derive an upper limit of 6 × 10−16eV with high certainty.
How does the energy of a photon depend on its wavelength?
The energy and momentum of a photon depend only on its frequency () or inversely, its wavelength (λ): where k is the wave vector (where the wave number k = |k| = 2π/λ), ω = 2πν is the angular frequency, and ħ = h/2π is the reduced Planck constant.
