16

ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION AND MATTER

When we sum Equation (1.49) and Equation (1.54) we see that the second sum in Equation (1.49) cancels the second sum in Equation (1.54) as mentioned earlier. This is good because the cancellation removes the time dependence present in |E|2 and |B|2 so that the energy Eem is timeindependent as it should be for an electromagnetic eld in vacuum. The cancellation also gets rid of the troublesome terms involving the dot product of polarization vectors whose factors have too few or too many complex conjugations and are evaluated at different values of their momentum. The rst sums in Equation (1.49) and Equation (1.54) are equal so we get a factor 2. Inserting the factor 1/(8 ) from Equation (1.20) we get, setting Eem = H (1.55) H= 1 k, k a (k)a (k) + a (k)a (k) 2 = =
k, 1 2 k, k

2a (k)a (k) + 1
1 2

(1.56) (1.57)

N (k) +

where we have used the commutation relation in Equation (1.31) in Equation (1.56) and introduced the number operator N (k) from Equation (1.35) in Equation (1.57). This is a remarkable result for several reasons. First, it shows that the energy of the electromagnetic eld is indeed quantized so that we may speak of photons. Second, it shows that the quantum of energy is k ( k really) where k = |k|. The quantities where k and were rst introduced in the plane wave solutions of the wave Equation (1.21) and they derive their physical meaning from that expression: is the angular frequency. Thus we nd the relation E = , the equation Planck wrote down for black-body radiation. And third, it has the remarkable consequence that even if there are no photons (N (k) = 0 for all k and ) the energy is not zero but in fact innite! This is annoying to say the least and a sign of serious trouble ahead. In the meantime we give it a name: zero point energy and measure all energies relative to it. This is the second time that one encounters this kind of nonsense; the rst time was in the treatment of the Harmonic Oscillator to which the current trouble can be traced. So its really only one problem, some consolation! The analogy between the above result for the energy spectrum of electromagnetic energy and the energy spectrum of the Harmonic Oscillator is the justication for speaking in terms of oscillators present in an electromagnetic eld when giving an elementary derivation of Black Body Radiation in introductory physics. But its no more than a manner of speaking. We now see why the choice of pre-factor in Equation (1.29), Equation (1.30) and Equation (1.41) is a good one even though it appeared to