Evanescent (tunneling) photon and cellular `vision'

Abstract

The existence of a rudimentary form of cellular `vision' was discovered experimentally by Albrecht-Buehler. He found that Swiss 3T3 cells approached distant infrared light spots and suggested that the most likely explanation for this phenomenon involves the long-range processing of electromagnetic signals by the cells. In this paper, a theoretical possibility of this phenomenon is presented within the fully quantum theoretical framework of the electromagnetic field and water. By taking into account the usually neglected interaction between the electric dipole field of water molecules and the quantized electromagnetic field, the dynamically ordered region of water surrounding the cells up to the coherence length <50 μm is shown to play the role of a nonlinear coherent optical device through which the cells receive electromagnetic signals from distant light spots. The electromagnetic signals for the cells Albrecht-Buehler found are shown to consist of evanescent photons (i.e. soft polaritons) tunneling through the dynamically ordered region of water between the cell and the distant light spot. In contrast to the (normal) vision of animals realized by receiving (normal) photons, cellular `vision' is found to be realized by receiving evanescent photons. It is also suggested that the existence of the dynamically ordered region of water realizing a boson condensation of evanescent photons inside and outside the cell can be regarded as the definition of life.