Simple question with a not so simple answer probably: Why can't photons be thought of as solitons? Assuming for a moment that there is some kind of a space-time medium, could a photon not be a soliton in such a setup? I have read something against it, which stated that there are no processes that could produce such a wave. For instance an electron giving up energy in the form of a photon does not oscillate in the right way or at all. Would such a solition produce the kind of effects one sees with the double slit experiment?

 

I would think that the idea of photons as solitons would be a straight forward idea to come up with, but I couldn't easily find anything relating to this idea on the internet (probably because I had been searching for "wave packet"). That makes we think that there is probably a pretty obvious reason that it fails. I am working from the premise that a space-time medium exists, but this is not the accepted model, so is this then the primary reason that it fails? Also, would a light beam made up of individual soliton-photons give the same result with the double slit experiment?

 

Here are two links I found that discusses the idea. HERE and HERE. They are both from ten or more years ago though, so how did they fail? The first one is just an abstract, but the second link is a more comprehensive treatment of the subject.

You can have optical solitons, but the effect depends on the medium.

Isn't that a bit self-defeating? Since we know that photon wavefunctions do disperse, how can they be solitons?

Isn't that a bit self-defeating? Since we know that photon wavefunctions do disperse, how can they be solitons?

 

They disperse in a vacuum; not in selected nonlinear optics. Apparently useful for keeping pulses separate (rather than spreading and overlapping) in high bit-rate fiber optic transmissions.

Would a superfluid medium show dispersive properties as well as nonliniear speeds depending on wavelength?