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Old January 16th 19, 04:15 AM posted to sci.astro.research
Eric Flesch
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Default What does it mean in astrophysics for X-rays to be reflected?

On Mon, 14 Jan 2019, Thomas Womack wrote:
generally-occuring materials either absorb or transmit them.
[[Mod. note -- ... As you note, coherent reflection seems unlikely.


Does not radiation reflection *always* consist of absorption &
re-transmission? By "coherent reflection", JT seems to imply
preservation of the original photons. But photons don't "bounce" in
the rubber-ball sense, right?

I'm reminded of transferring money in the banking system -- it's not
the same dollar that moves around, money is "fungible" in the sense
that a dollar has no individual identity as such. I am suspecting
that photons are fungible in the same way, but that that element is
not built into the model of light as we know it.

[[Mod. note -- My apologies for being unclear. What I was trying to
get at with the phrase "coherent reflection" (which in hindsight was
a poor choice of words on my part) was "reflecting like a beam of
optical light from a mirror, with angle-of-reflection =
angle-of-incidence".

As to whether elastic scattering of any sort yields the "same" photon,
I suspect that you're right and that photons don't have an individual
identify. In fact, I suspect that "the same photon" isn't even a
meaningful concept in quantum optics. But my knowledge of quantum
optics is alas very small, so I can't speak with any authority on
this....
-- jt]]