Phase-space description of photon emission

Quantum Physics arXiv:2512.21783 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 25 Dec 2025] Title:Phase-space description of photon emission Authors:D.V. Karlovets, A.A. Shchepkin, A.D. Chaikovskaia, D.V. Grosman, D.A. Kargina, U.G. Rybak, G.K. Sizykh View a PDF of the paper titled Phase-space description of photon emission, by D.V. Karlovets and 6 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Interactions between charged particles and light occur in real space and time, yet quantum field theory usually describes them in momentum space. Whereas this approach is well suited for calculating emission probabilities and cross sections, it is insensitive to spatial and temporal phenomena such as, for instance, radiation formation, quantum coherence, and wave packet spreading. These effects are becoming increasingly important for experiments involving electrons, photons, atoms, and ions, particularly with the advent of attosecond spectroscopy and metrology. Here, we propose a general method for describing the emission of photons in phase space via a Wigner function. Several effects for Cherenkov radiation are predicted, absent in classical realm or in quantum theory in momentum space, such as a finite spreading time of the photon, finite duration of the flash and a quantum shift of the photon arrival time. The photon spreading time turns out to be negative near the Cherenkov angle, the flash duration is defined by the electron packet size, and the temporal shift can be both positive and negative. The characteristic time scales of these effects lie in the atto- and femtosecond ranges, thereby illustrating atomic origins of these macroscopic phenomena. The near-field distribution of the photon field resembles the electron packet shape, thus making ``snapshots'' of the emitter wave function. Our approach can easily be generalized to the other types of radiation and extended to scattering, decay, and annihilation processes, bringing tomographic methods of quantum optics to particle physics. Comments: Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) Cite as: arXiv:2512.21783 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2512.21783v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2512.21783 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Alexander Shchepkin [view email] [v1] Thu, 25 Dec 2025 20:59:11 UTC (4,854 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Phase-space description of photon emission, by D.V. Karlovets and 6 other authorsView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2025-12 Change to browse by: hep-th References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) Links to Code Toggle Papers with Code (What is Papers with Code?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)