
Virtual Femto Photography - wallflower
https://benedikt-bitterli.me/femto.html
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luckystarr
This is utterly beautiful. The first example (very simplified) shows a very
simple pulse of light and what arises is of intriguing complexity.

I immediately thought about Feynman talking about the "TREMENDOUS mess"[1]
bouncing around the room.

I can't even begin to imagine it.

1\.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LG0nFFDrFHM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LG0nFFDrFHM)

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rwmj
I thought light doesn't move in a straight line, but instead takes all paths
from the source to the destination (it's just that most paths cancel each
other out)?

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dr_zoidberg
Without trying to think too much over it (still haven't had my morning
coffee), I think your representation of light corresponds to a wave vision.
However, per wave-particle duality, you can also consider light as moving
photons (particle vision of light) and then yes, every single photon moves in
a straight light (tries to). So it depends in how you're trying to see light.

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jwmerrill
As far as I can tell, this "buckshot theory of photons" is a heuristic that is
never actually formalized or used in serious calculations. In actual quantum
optics calculations I have seen, a photon is a quantized excitation of a mode
of an optical system, and it is definitely not localized to a moving point in
space. There are "wave packets" that are somewhat localized in space and move
together, but these are not the same as "photons".

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dr_zoidberg
The wave packets interpretation reminds me of Schrödinger, but I don't
remember exactly why it was dropped back in the day (circa 1940). Sorry I'm so
sloppy on these topics, I never studied them formally ("mathematically" if you
will -- think what I did more like a "history of quantum mechanics" course)
and it's also been a long since last read about.

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ykl
Amazing work from the author, as usual. For anyone who isn't familiar with the
rest of Benedikt's work, it's absolutely worth taking a look at.

