Photon - Photons in Matter

Photons in Matter

Light that travels through transparent matter does so at a lower speed than c, the speed of light in a vacuum. In addition, light can also undergo scattering and absorption. There are circumstances in which heat transfer through a material is mostly radiative, involving emission and absorption of photons within it. An example would be in the core of the Sun. Energy can take about a million years to reach the surface. However, this phenomenon is distinct from scattered radiation passing diffusely through matter, as it involves local equilibration between the radiation and the temperature. Thus, the time is how long it takes the energy to be transferred, not the photons themselves. Once in open space, a photon from the Sun takes only 8.3 minutes to reach Earth. The factor by which the speed of light is decreased in a material is called the refractive index of the material. In a classical wave picture, the slowing can be explained by the light inducing electric polarization in the matter, the polarized matter radiating new light, and the new light interfering with the original light wave to form a delayed wave. In a particle picture, the slowing can instead be described as a blending of the photon with quantum excitations of the matter (quasi-particles such as phonons and excitons) to form a polariton; this polariton has a nonzero effective mass, which means that it cannot travel at c.

Alternatively, photons may be viewed as always traveling at c, even in matter, but they have their phase shifted (delayed or advanced) upon interaction with atomic scatters: this modifies their wavelength and momentum, but not speed. A light wave made up of these photons does travel slower than the speed of light. In this view the photons are "bare", and are scattered and phase shifted, while in the view of the preceding paragraph the photons are "dressed" by their interaction with matter, and move without scattering or phase shifting, but at a lower speed.

Light of different frequencies may travel through matter at different speeds; this is called dispersion. In some cases, it can result in extremely slow speeds of light in matter. The effects of photon interactions with other quasi-particles may be observed directly in Raman scattering and Brillouin scattering.

Photons can also be absorbed by nuclei, atoms or molecules, provoking transitions between their energy levels. A classic example is the molecular transition of retinal C₂₀H₂₈O, which is responsible for vision, as discovered in 1958 by Nobel laureate biochemist George Wald and co-workers. The absorption provokes a cis-trans isomerization that, in combination with other such transitions, is transduced into nerve impulses. The absorption of photons can even break chemical bonds, as in the photodissociation of chlorine; this is the subject of photochemistry. Analogously, gamma rays can in some circumstances dissociate atomic nuclei in a process called photodisintegration.