Does a single photon moving through space in an overall straight line actually trace out a sine wave, turning left and right as it goes?
In: Physics
No, a photon does not move in a sinusoidal path.
A photon travels in a straight line from source to destination, and the “sine waves” that you are thinking of are simply a *representation* of the electromagnetic field that the photon is made of.
The oscillation of the electromagnetic field describes the *properties* of the photon (frequency, polarization, and velocity), not its actual physical movement.
Part of the difficulty in this is that a photon is *both* a particle and a wave at the same time. It was a massive logical leap when it was made, and it’s still counterintuitive today, but it is fact and has been verified time and time again.
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