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has been cited by the following article:

• TITLE: Can a Free Electron Absorb a Photon?

  AUTHORS: Golden Gadzirayi Nyambuya, Godson Fortune Abbey, Joseph Simfukwe, Saul Paul Phiri, Prospery Christopher Simpemba, Alok Srivastava

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

  JOURNAL NAME: International Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Vol.15 No.2, June 30, 2025

  ABSTRACT: 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.