Minkowski and Abraham Momenta Revisited from the Perspective of Photon Dynamics

Abstract

The distinction between Minkowski and Abraham momenta has traditionally been discussed in the context of electron dynamics. In this work, we revisit the problem from the perspective of photon dynamics in a medium, and show that, within a field-theoretic formulation, their relation is naturally encoded through covariant and ordinary derivatives, together with a medium-induced gauge field. In this quantized framework, the microscopic origin of the optical Hall effect is identified as a spin-Zeeman-type coupling that emerges from the Dirac-like equation for photons.