Suppose that we have a particle which is described by the Schrödinger equation. When we measure its position at some accuracy Δs to be the point x, we collapse its wave function.
To describe the further development of the particle, we form a wave packet from plane waves, such that its initial configuration has a width of roughly Δs and it is centered at x. The wave packet is built by summing plane waves with various momenta p. The wave packet is built such that it has no angular momentum, it has a mirror symmetry around any plane which contains x.
We assume that a particle is born from applying a source to a wave equation. When we build the new wave packet, we kind of recreate the particle. If we build a packet which contains no angular momentum, then the spin of the particle is zero.
But the electron contains h-bar/2 of angular momentum. We have two options:
1. Add the angular momentum to the particle as a spin quantum number and use a wave packet which contains no angular momentum.
2. Or, build a new wave packet which contains angular momentum. For example, we could build "mini-packets" which are launched from a ring around x in a fireworks pinwheel fashion. This would imitate the original creation of the particle wave by a rotating source.
In an earlier blog post, we had the idea that a rotating electric dipole is sending rotating mini-dipoles around, and such a mini-dipole is the photon.
The Huygens principle states that "every point in space becomes a producer of new waves". This sounds somewhat like option 2 above.
There is a complication in the case of the electron: any source which produces an electron will also produce a positron. How to get rid of the created extra positron? Maybe the positron is created "virtual" in some sense, and it proceeds to annihilate the original electron.
No comments:
Post a Comment