The Photon

Abstract

The fact that Hght can be regarded as a wave phenomenon was experimentally shown in the 17th and 18th centuries by the Dutch physicist Huygens and the English physician Young with the aid of interference experiments. In the 19th century, the physical nature of these waves came to light: they are electromagnetic waves, described by Maxwell’s equations. They are characterised by the field vectors E and B of the electric and the magnetic field and exhibit a periodicity with the frequency ω.