Wave-nature of things

[hobz]

To my understanding, the wave-nature of energy can explain a lot of phenomena with the exception of interaction with certain other energy manifestations e.g. light interacting with an electron.

Is the reason that the wave-nature cannot explain this that the superposition principle of a wave simply will add the two wave-forms of the photon and electron, and not cause a change in either's momentum?

If so, could the wave-theory be modified to somehow exclude superposition under some circumstances?

[timo]

"Superposition principle" is just saying that entities of the same kind can be (or maybe must be) added up to form a third combined entity. This can be amplitudes of two wavefronts in water, or forces, or solutions of linear differential equations. There is no such thing as THE superposition principle.

 

One does not add up wave functions of electrons and photons since there is no reason to do so. I also wouldn't know how to do that since in standard representation the electron is a bi-spinor valued field while the photon is a vector-valued one, i.e. you'd have to do something akin to adding five to the unit vector in x-direction.

 

There is no such thing as a wave nature of energy, btw.

Edited November 5, 2010 by timo