{"id":238245,"date":"2026-06-03T02:34:29","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T07:34:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/cutting-a-photon-in-two-creates-an-infinite-swarm-of-particles"},"modified":"2026-06-03T02:34:29","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T07:34:29","slug":"cutting-a-photon-in-two-creates-an-infinite-swarm-of-particles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/cutting-a-photon-in-two-creates-an-infinite-swarm-of-particles","title":{"rendered":"Cutting a photon in two creates an infinite swarm of particles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/cutting-a-photon-in-two-creates-an-infinite-swarm-of-particles2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>By definition, elementary particles can\u2019t be broken into smaller pieces. But in a new theoretical study published in <a href=\"https:\/\/journals.aps.org\/prl\/accepted\/10.1103\/94pm-hp34\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Physical Review Letters<\/i><\/a>, Johannes Skaar and colleagues have revealed what would happen if you tried anyway for a single photon. The answer is deeply strange: attempting to cut a photon in two wouldn\u2019t produce two smaller photons, but instead conjure an infinite number of them out of thin air.<\/p>\n<p>Like any quantum particle, a photon exists simultaneously as a single, localized particle, and an extended wave, spread out across space. For their investigation, Skaar\u2019s team considered what would happen if a single photon passed through an optical shutter\u2014essentially a very fast mirror that can be switched on and off to block part of a pulse of light. If the shutter was fast enough, it could intercept the photon mid-pulse, snipping off part of this extended wave.<\/p>\n<p>To find out what would happen afterward, the researchers applied quantum equations that describe how the photon\u2019s underlying electromagnetic field behaves at the quantum level. Specifically, their analysis tracked precisely how the photon\u2019s quantum state would be transformed by the shutter\u2019s intervention.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By definition, elementary particles can\u2019t be broken into smaller pieces. But in a new theoretical study published in Physical Review Letters, Johannes Skaar and colleagues have revealed what would happen if you tried anyway for a single photon. The answer is deeply strange: attempting to cut a photon in two wouldn\u2019t produce two smaller photons, [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,48,1617,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-238245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-information-science","category-particle-physics","category-quantum-physics","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238245\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}