I was reading this response to a question involving EM radiation due to an accelerating charge. A charge's oscillations disturb its electric field, and this effect propogates at the speed of light. If a charge is oscillating back and forth then it is emitting oscillating electric fields, or EM waves.
Can this effect be explained in terms of a photon? If i wiggle a charge around, how is a quantized packet of energy created and what determines how often these light packets are emitted?
If you wiggle a charge around you has done a energy transfer to this charge. At the end, if you follow to the basics, this transfer happens by the transfer of photons (see the discussions in PSE about the touch of the hand to something). So it should not be wrong to say that the transfered photons somehow are sitting on the charge. This holds even for charges in a magnetic field where the charge has to have a kinetic energy to get deflected from the magnetic field.
In the case of accelerations, say inside an antenna rod, as well as under the influence of a magnetic field the charge emits electromagnetic radiation. It was found empiricaly that this emission happens always in packages. Until now it was not found a deeper explanation why this happens in packages.
