It is very easy to forget that classical waves have a classical intensity (the squared amplitude), quantized "waves" have probability amplitudes, the squares are called probability densities. Just sayin' Well, ok, Krane, which I have to hand has this to say: "Keep in mind that "photon" [as particle] and [photon as] "wave" represent descriptions of the behaviour of electromagnetic radiation when it encounters matter. It is not correct to think of light as being "composed" of photons [or waves]." He's saying it's about interactions with matter, and uses the double slit experiment, which is just diffraction with two slits--an interference pattern is an intensity pattern, there is a classical description, not quantized, and a quantum description which is quantized. Then, we have to be careful about what we mean by the amplitude of an electric field, say.
So my hunch was basically correct you were on about classical EM not QED. There is no restriction whatsoever on the possible oscillation amplitudes of free charges. Or, up to dielectric breakdown, any restriction on the polarization amplitudes of say lattice ions in a dielectric. Maybe there is a vague notion quantized emission owing to an electron dropping from one excited bound state to a lower energy state in an atom/molecule translates to everything else. It doesn't. Please use quote facility from now on.
This is exactly why I think Farsight's treatment of matter is his model's weak point. Every time I drop a precisely-posed question about quantum mechanics, he's gone.
I missed your post, that's all. I do. The h in E=hf is all to do with the quantum nature of light. But this doesn't mean energy is delivered in integer-like lumps. A photon can have any frequency you like, and any energy you like. And you can shave a bit of this energy off in say Compton scattering, reducing the frequency. I beg to differ. You need to think of the photon as something like a seismic wave. Sending it up two valleys doesn't convert it into two seismic waves. Then when you detect the photon, it's like absorbing the seismic wave with a pointy stick the size of a mountain range. You don't absorb half of it. And the location of that seismic wave was never limited to the location of the pointy end of your stick.
This explanation would be plausible if the detectors were anywhere near as large as the photon, but they're not. In a typical setup, each detector is at most a couple of centimeters across, and the two detectors are ~10 cm apart on the optical table. This means that at the time of detection, the two parts of the photon are likewise ~10 cm apart. In the language of your analogy, the stick is not the size of a mountain range, but roughly the same size as the width of the valley. So how can one detector soak up the whole photon when it doesn't overlap with much of the photon spatially? Is there some mechanism by which the light gets "pulled back" from the other detector, as if it were a viscous fluid? Or is there some mechanism by which the detector is actually an order of magnitude larger than its apparent physical extent?
So, by definition, Farsight doesn't believe in the quantum nature of photons. It's sad how many people seem to accept that Farsight might actually have a sensible point: he merely has his own, uninformed, opinion and the ability to cut and paste the arguments of others, cherry-picked to superficially resemble his initial opinion. Of course, Farsight does occasionally change his mind. E.g., in posts from about 10 years ago, he appears to be trying to learn and use math in order to argue his position; however he clearly gave up on that idea. So, again Farsight demonstrates that he does not believe in the quantum nature of photons by claiming that they are just like classical waves.
You missed the point of the "pointy stick". It can absorb the vibration of the seismic wave even though it doesn't overlap with much of it spatially. I don't think so. You wouldn't think of a seismic wave as some kind of viscous fluid. I would encourage you to think in terms of a seismic wave. For example supposing I send a seismic wave across a gedanken plain from A to B. It isn't just the houses on top of the AB line that shake. In this respect the seismic wave takes many paths. No, but you might say the photon is. A seismic wave with an amplitude of 1 metre is much more than 1 metre wide. The house on top of the AB line will shake back and forth by 1 metre. A house a kilometre away might shake back and forth by ten centimetres, a house ten kilometres away might shake back and forth by a centimetre, and so on.
This statement is invalid (boosting part) if the photons frequency is below the threshold. In such case the higher amplitude will yield nothing...
I guess my question, then, is how? If I put a big, pointy stick in the ground in the middle of an earthquake, it will not immediately damp the tremors five miles away, even if the whole seismic wave is that large. To very good approximation, seismic waves follow the "wavelet" picture, in which the wavefront's dynamics can be predicted by treating each point on the front as an independent source. The interference between all these point sources' outputs gives rise to the collective wavefront behavior. So if I put a damping stick in the ground somewhere, it would cancel out the wavelet sources in that area and change the propagation pattern accordingly, but it would do nothing to suppress the distant wavelets that already exist. Based on Maxwell's equations with no modification, light is also very well-described by wavelets, so it doesn't make sense to say that a local detector could eliminate distant field fluctuations just because the field itself is extensive. Now, I assume you think Maxwell's equations are incomplete, if only because you need some nonlinearity to get the bound states you call matter. But you really need to explain in at least a little detail what kind of nonlinearities could give rise to such long-distance detector action. I'm not having any trouble with the idea that a wave can be spatially extensive. I'm having trouble with the idea that soaking up energy from one part of a wave can remove the energy from another, spatially distant part. True. I was working under the assumption that we were over the threshold frequency. Under that assumption, I think my statement is accurate.
