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I don't really understand the wave-particle duality of light.I don't really understand the idea of photon, The idea of photon that is generally taught is that it is a fundamental unit of light with energy h$\nu$.But according to electromagnetic theory of light, rate of energy transfer per unit area is given by $\vec{S}=\frac{1}{\mu_0}\vec{E}\times\vec{B}$, and by substituting expressions for $\vec{E}$ as $E_0\sin(kx-\omega t)$ and similarly for other variables at some $x=x_0$(say 0) and by adjusting the area and integrating over a very small interval of time,the net energy transferred can come out to be less than the energy of a photon. What does this imply ? I have heard about the existence if single-photon emitters, what would happen if an interference experiment is conducted with them? Will there be a particular bright spot or what is going to happen?

The more I read about this, the more doubts I get. It would be really helpful if someone can explain the notion of a photon.

Qmechanic
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Seeker
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I am by no means an expert in this, and what I say might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure the classical electromagnetic theory doesn't hold for such small time intervals. As you mention, the emission of radiation is classically viewed as a continous process, namely because energy is not quantized in classical EM. However, we know that at a quantum level the emission of radiation essentially sums up to the emission of photons, since these are the carriers of the EM interactions between particles. Therefore, obtaining an energy smaller than that of the photons being emitted (say, by a monocrhomatic source) makes no sense, to my understanding, since the minimum energy the system could emit is already determined by the energy of a single photon (i.e: $h\nu$)

Lagrangiano
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