A physically motivated quantization of the electromagnetic field
A physically motivated quantization of the electromagnetic field
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DOI：
10.1088/0143-0807/37/1/014001
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发表时间：
2016-01-01
影响因子：
0.7
通讯作者：
Beige, Almut
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Bennett, Robert;Barlow, Thomas M.;Beige, Almut
电磁场是量子化的概念通常是从光电效应和黑体光谱等观测中推断出来的。然而，这个场的量子化的解释通常是数学上的动机，开始是引入矢量势，接着是施加规范，允许将麦克斯韦方程的解操纵成一种适合于正则量子化机器的形式。相比之下，我们在这里以较少的数学和更多的物理动机的方式来描述电磁场。从一个直接的描述在实验中看到的，我们表明，通常的表达式的电场和磁场的观测量遵循海森堡的运动方程。在我们的处理中，没有必要调用特定规范中的矢量势，并且我们避免了通常使用的将边界条件应用于场的虚拟腔的概念。
The notion that the electromagnetic field is quantized is usually inferred from observations such as the photoelectric effect and the black-body spectrum. However accounts of the quantization of this field are usually mathematically motivated and begin by introducing a vector potential, followed by the imposition of a gauge that allows the manipulation of the solutions of Maxwell's equations into a form that is amenable for the machinery of canonical quantization. By contrast, here we quantize the electromagnetic field in a less mathematically and more physically motivated way. Starting from a direct description of what one sees in experiments, we show that the usual expressions of the electric and magnetic field observables follow from Heisenberg's equation of motion. In our treatment, there is no need to invoke the vector potential in a specific gauge and we avoid the commonly used notion of a fictitious cavity that applies boundary conditions to the field.