What kind—waves are transverse waves produced by the motion of photons.?
Group waves. [Quantum Mechanics, Chap 1, Schaum’s Outline Groups of photons are oscillating perpendicular to the direction the photons are traveling. This makes them, by definition, transverse rather than compression waves like sound. One way to visualize this is to think of ripples on a pond. The water molecules are like the photons. And together the molecules as a group (the pond’s surface) oscillate up and down wrt the surface as the waves move along the surface. There are obvious differences between the ripples and the light waves. First, light oscillates perpendicular to and a full 360 degrees around the direction of travel, not just relative to some two-dimensional surface like water. Polarized sun glasses take advantage of this by blocking out most of the waves and letting through just a few oriented over a small subset of the 360 deg. Second, the light photons move at the same speed as the group waves…the speed of light. If you imagine a single photon riding on the crest of a
