English

H S Bukhari Masroor

doi:10.5897/ijps2013.4025

Abstract

A phenomenological model is presented here arguing that photon mass is an induced effect rendered in the form of vacuum potential arising from vacuum natural modes. An elementary vacuum potential is defined as a function of vacuum zero-point fields, which yields an expression for effective photon mass generation. A Lagrangian is constructed for this model which incorporates photons with effective mass in vacuo. It is suggested that photons may acquire or present an effective mass while interactions with vacuum or other fields but they do not have an intrinsic rest mass. The photon mass emerges as a dynamical variable which depends on the coupling strength of electromagnetic fields to the vacuum natural modes and on the value of vector potential. Key words: Photon mass, Maxwell-Proca equations, vacuum potentials, Higgs potential.

Highlights

There have been numerous studies in the past investigating the problem of photon mass and some comprehensive reviews (Lakes, 1998; Tu et al, 2005) on the problem can be found in literature
Photon mass problem remains an active area of physics
In order to incorporate the electromagnetic field, as well as to preserve gauge invariance, we introduce a specific form of the Lagrangian, called the ‘Stueckelberg’s Lagrangian’ (Itzykson and Zuber, 1985), and modify it to include photons with a mass μ and vector potential Aμ as: L em and perform a covariant derivative gauge transformation:

Summary

INTRODUCTION

There have been numerous studies in the past investigating the problem of photon mass and some comprehensive reviews (Lakes, 1998; Tu et al, 2005) on the problem can be found in literature. It is obvious that the vacuum expectation value of potential is expressed in the form of electromagnetic currents, where the screening is underlying mechanism or condition that yields an effective mass. In order to incorporate the electromagnetic field, as well as to preserve gauge invariance, we introduce a specific form of the Lagrangian, called the ‘Stueckelberg’s Lagrangian’ (Itzykson and Zuber, 1985), and modify it to include photons with a mass μ and vector potential Aμ as:. The first two terms define the vacuum potential in covariant derivative form (including a mass term); the third, fourth and fifth terms depict the electromagnetic field; the sixth term represents the vacuum potential and the last term is the interaction of photons with vacuum potential. This Lagrangian defines a system of a vacuum potential interacting with enclosed electromagnetic fields, and has all the terms for the defined vacuum potential and the massive electromagnetic field, as well as their interaction

DISCUSSION

Conclusion