A path integral formalism is used to describe the propagation of photons through a transparent medium. It is shown that the reduced phase velocity of light can be understood quantitatively by taking into account the contribution of all the possible classical paths the photon could have taken in order to reach a detector. These paths include all the multiple scattering processes by the atoms in the medium.
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© 1997 American Association of Physics Teachers.
1997
American Association of Physics Teachers
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