Does photon electromagnetic field "shake" charged particles and atoms?

Question

Lets theoreticaly imagine completly stationary particle,like electron for example.Can photon,or photons shake it,or oscillate its position? By that I dont necesarily mean the center position must change,more like jumping up and down,cyclicaly attracted and repelled by electromagnetic field.

What I really want to know is,if there is plasma above solid surface,with charged atoms and electrons being in close proximity but not touching the surface,will photons from either coherent or incoherent light source smash them against the solid surface?

I know that in plasma due to thermal motion they are colliding with the solid surface all the time,but apart from this normal thermal motion,theoreticaly if it was near zero temperature plasma,will the photons grab the charged species with their EM field and smash them agaisnt the surface near the peaks of the EM field oscillation cycle?

If photons can indeed make the electrons shake with their oscillating EM field,is it only when they hit the electron or can electron start oscillating in this field without being directly hit with the photons just flying close to it?

How far away can the photons move the electron from its center position during the oscillating movement? Is it 1/4 of wavelenght? So 400nm photon could move it 100nm from center,is it more? Is it less? Does it depend on photon flux density?

If the electrons or charged atoms move around the photons,how fast they will go at the peak in eV units? Does it depends more on the number of photons or wavelenght of photons? Will for example a 10eV photons make the electron shake with peak speed of 10 eV?

Answer 1

Photons induce a small push on the electrons of a transparent material which slow down the peak of the electric part of the wave.

Then, the electron returns to its rest position inducing the delayed peak of the magnetic part, 90 degrees compared to the wave mentioned above.

In brief, a photon wave is slowed down for the same reason an electric wave slows down in a coax cable: The cable is equivalent to an infinite number of inductors in series and capacitors in parallel. The inductors store then release current while the capacitors store then release voltage. The ohmic loss is negligeable so the wave travels with a delay but without wasting energy.

The electron acts as the capacitor when pushed away, then acts like the inductor when it comes back to the rest position.

Note: If the electromagnetic wave were a continuous sinusoidal wave, we would not be able to distinguish the electric from the magnetic side since it is symmetrical on any 90 degrees increment. But photons are made of a single wave, so the first side that reaches a peak is arbitrarily called electric and the electric wave oriented 90 degrees and delayed by 1/4 of a cycle is magnetic as it is reacting to a changing electric field.

Answer 2

As photons travel rather fast, I strongly doubt that the picture, that an electron is accelerated due to the E-field of the photon, makes sense. Just take your example and estimate

• Let's assume the interaction takes place over one wavelength. The time it takes the photon to travel one wavelength is $T = \lambda/c$.
• The acceleration would be by rearranging $s = \frac{1}{2} a t^2$ to get $a \sim 2 \lambda / T^2$.
• Now let's calc the energy in units of $mc^2$ \begin{align} \frac{E}{mc^2} &= \frac{F \cdot s}{mc^2} \sim \frac{F \cdot \frac{\lambda}{4}}{mc^2} \\ &= \frac{a \cdot \lambda}{4 c^2} = \frac{a\cdot \lambda}{4 \lambda^2/T^2} \\ &= \frac{2 \lambda/T^2\cdot \lambda}{4 \lambda^2/T^2} = 0.5 \end{align} So the energy would be just half the energy needed to create a second electron. Hence, this is huge.

However, you might want to look into the possibility of a photon "colliding" with an electron. This is called the Compton effect.

Answer 3

Photons are elementary particles in the standard model of physics, with zero mass, spin + or -1 to its direction of motion, and energy=h*nu. No electric or magnetic field there for individual photons.

The classical electromagnetic field with the varying electric and magnetic fields is an emergent phenomenon from the superposition of innumerable quantum mechanical photon wavefunctions.

In the wave function the electric and magnetic fields are there but photon-electron interactions are described by Feynman diagrams not by a classical "charged particle interaction with electric field", because one is in the quantum mechanical regime at photon particle interactions.

In conclusion, photon electron interaction has no oscillations as you envisage, there will be a scattering described by

when integrated it will give the probability of scattering a photon off an electron.

Classical em radiation is a different story , because the coherent ensemble of zillions of photons does build up a varying electric and magnetic field. After all that is the power of a laser beam, its coherence . Have a look at this .

In high-harmonic generation (HHG) the highly nonlinear interaction between high-intensity laser pulses and atoms generates odd harmonics of the frequency of the driving laser. Very high-order harmonics are possible — the harmonic order can reach several hundred — allowing the generation of coherent light at nanometre wavelengths with visible driving lasers. We study methods for increasing the generation efficiency as well as applications of high-harmonic beams, such as ultrafast, "lensless" X-ray imaging.