what happens to a light particle/wave if it bouces infinitly btwn two perfect slabs of mirrors?

Answer 1

You answered your own question. If it bounces infinitely between two perfect mirrors, then it just keeps bouncing. That's what infinite means.

These are some of the considerations though.
1) The mirrors must be perfectly flat (not possible at the atomic level). Otherwise, the photon will eventually bounce off at an angle and be lost.

2) The mirror surfaces must be perfectly parallel. Again, if they are not parallel, the photon will bounce at an angle and eventually work its way off of the mirror.

3) The mirrors must be perfectly reflective, which is not physically possible.

3) Must be done in a perfect vacuum. Need to have the photon avoid collisions with any other atoms/molecules that may cause scattering.

5) Probably the most important, you will never know if it is happening. Because if the photon is bouncing between the mirrors, it is not getting to a detector or your eye. So if you see nothing happening between two parallel mirrors, that's a good sign that maybe something is!

Hope this helps,

-Guru

Answer 2

I agree with Guru's answer. In practice, nobody has even come close to making two mirrors reflective enough, aligning them precisely enough or creating a perfect enough vacuum in the space between them for a photon to last for even a millisecond in these conditions. If you had a vacuum tube 100 metres long with two perfectly parallel mirrors at the ends, the photons would be reflected 3 million times a second. My guess is that the jiggling of atoms in the mirrors due to quantum effects, even if you cooled the mirrors to near absolute zero would prevent you from aligning the mirrors well enough for the experiment to work. The mirrors would need to be made on some principle other than a shiny metallic surface, but I can't suggest how. One thought; you can slow a light beam down to less than walking pace in a Bose-Einstein condensate a fraction of a degree above absolute zero. So if you filled the space between the mirrors with a BE condensate, maybe you could store photons like this for a long period. You can even stop a photon completely in a BE condensate and start it up again. So a photon trap is a possibility after all, even with today's technology. Another possibility; you can put a light beam into orbit around a black hole.

Answer 3

This is an example of a thought experiment.

There are no "perfect" slabs of mirrors and aligning the light "perfectly" perpendicular to two "perfectly" parallel surfaces would be impossible. Let alone setting up in a "perfect" vacuum to eliminate any particles which might absorb the light energy and convert it to thermal energy.

But if we could, I suspect the light would travel back and forth indefinitely.

Answer 4

Assuming you can get perfectly aligned, perfectly flat mirrors, which you can't, every material has some probablity of absorbing that photon. The answer is, that it is practical to set up an experiment, probably without flat mirrors where a photon can bounce a long time. Eventually, it will be absorbed, where it will turn into electricity or heat.

Answer 5

Nothing until it is intercepted by something else, like a camera lens or a retina. In other words, you will never see the photon bouncing back and forth until you detect, but then it will no longer be bouncing.

Answer 6

Maybe
It will go until it give all it's energies to the mirror and it be observed to the mirror completely

Answer 7

all particles decompose