The Enigmatic Photon

Book excerpt: This book is a sequel to The Enigmatic Photon. Volume 1: The Field IX(3)/SUP /EM(Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994), which presented the first systematic development of the fundamental magnetizing field of electromagnetic radiation: the field £Ii£(3). Its 12 chapters collectively describe the properties of Ii(3) in a vacuum and in the interaction of light with matter. The present volume deals with the development of the theory of the Evans--Vigier field Ii(3). It opens with the derivation of the novel field Ii(3) from the Dirac equation of relativistic quantum field theory. The existence of Ii(3) in the vacuum means that the gauge group of electromagnetism becomes 0(3), the group of rotations. This is non-Abelian, and so requires a self-consistent development of the vacuum Maxwell equations themselves. The role of Ii(3) is discussed in unified field theory and quantum electrodynamics. The classical vacuum field Ii(3) is a novel, fundamentally important feature of electrodynamics which indicates that the particulate photon carries mass, thus settling a longstanding debate in favour of protagonists of photon mass. For researchers and graduate students interested in the theory of electromagnetic radiation.