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.