Author(s)

Golden Gadzirayi Nyambuya¹, Godson Fortune Abbey², Joseph Simfukwe², Saul Paul Phiri², Prospery Christopher Simpemba², Alok Srivastava²

¹Fundamental Theoretical and Research Group, Faculty of Applied Sciences, Department of Applied Physics, National University of Science & Technology, Bulawayo, Republic of Zimbabwe.
²Department of Physics, School of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, The Copperbelt University, Kitwe, Republic of Zambia.

Contemporary physics holds that it is not possible for an electron to absorb a photon or to form a composite system as the resulting physics thereof leads to a scenario that can not be obtained in reality—i.e., it leads to a situation that requires the electron’s rest mass to be identically equal to zero. This position that a free electron cannot absorb a photon is correct if the photon is assumed to have an identically vanishing mass as is the case in contemporary physics. We herein argue otherwise—that an electron can indeed absorb a photon and this is on the proviso that the photon in question has a nonzero mass and obeys a specific dispersion relation. Further, we find that the electron can absorb a massive photon only with a frequency below the threshold determined by the photon mass and that of the electron.

Afterglow Emission, Gamma-Ray Bursts, Photon Mass, Plasma, Time-Lag, Time-Delay

Nyambuya, G. , Abbey, G. , Simfukwe, J. , Phiri, S. , Simpemba, P. and Srivastava, A. (2025) Can a Free Electron Absorb a Photon?. International Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 15, 161-170. doi: 10.4236/ijaa.2025.152012.