Can a Free Electron Absorb a Photon?

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.