When one photon interferes with another and they cancel each other out?

[Braznor]

Their massenergy still tends to remain real right? It is just that they cannot be observed anymore due to their cancellation effect? Or it that their massenergy cancels out too? I know I'm not being too clear in my question. But I guess that's the nature of the beast.

 

[Braznor]

Can someone please answer me?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Wave cancellation works with sound and stuff because it's actually a variable force applied to mass. It's actually pretty mechanically simple - you exert an equal forces in opposing directions and they cancel each other out. The matter (air, your speaker enclosure, your skull, etc.) through which the wave is traveling stays right where it is.

My instinct is that photons, what with light being both a particle and a wave, are "special" somehow, and so this doesn't work. But I'm a musician, not a science-talking guy. Probably ends up being additive-only.

 

[PowerEngineer]

If you want to gain a better understanding of photons and light, I recommend you watch the lectures given by Richard Feynman at the University of Auckland.

http://www.vega.org.uk/video/subseries/8

My understanding is that photons are best thought of as particles in the classical sense and so do not "cancel each other out". That said, photons do "interfere" with each other (and themselves) to create distributions (evident after processing a large numbers of photons) that mimic what we expect from wave-like behavior, which includes reinforcement and cancellation of probability amplitudes (as in dual slit experiment). I think this is at least close to being correct. 😕

 

[amd6502]

phase. It's common in nature

 

[serpretetsky]

I feel like no waves (regardless if it's audio, electromagnetic, water, whatever) ever "cancel" eachother out. There is interference, and you can get constructive and destructive regions, but the waves still continue moving on their way and energy is still conserved. I'd imagine this applies to photons, they do not cancel.