Who Has Seen a Free Photon?

While the notion of the position of photons is indispensable in quantum optical situations, it has been known in mathematical physics that any position operator cannot be defined for a massless free particle with a non-zero finite spin. This dilemma is resolved by introducing the "effective mass" of a photon due to the interaction with matter. The validity of this interpretation is confirmed in reference to the picture of "polariton", a basic notion in optical and solid physics. In this connection, we discuss the long-standing controversy between Minkowski's and Abraham's definitions of the momenta of a photon in media from the general viewpoint adopted in the Appendix.

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