Particle nature of light waves in dielectric media

Wave-particle duality is a foundation for modern science. The speed of light waves in dielectric media is less than c. The corresponding particles thus have mass. Combining wave-particle duality with the theory of relativity, an exactly solvable problem was proposed, concerning the transition from photons in vacuum to particles in dielectric media. The rest mass, the momentum, and the total energy of material particles are shown to be the functions of the refractive index of the medium and the wavelength of the incident light. The proposed relationships were applied to study the wavelength-dependent index of refraction of dielectrics and the correlation of the refractive indices of anisotropic crystals, which were confirmed by the experimental results. Variation of the refractive index with wavelength is found to obey the proposed relation. The refractive indices of anisotropic crystals are shown to be the correlated quantities. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.