On the necessity of photon concept

Abstract

It is shown that, although Einstein and Compton’s arguments were fundamental for the acceptance of the corpuscular character of electromagnetic radiation, there are other approaches able to explain the photoelectric and Compton effects, without using the photon concept. In this context, radiation is treated as a classic electromagnetic wave that interacts with the electron.

Keywords
Photon; light quantization; modern physics; Schrödinger equation