Transparent media

Henry Berg's observations related to mirrors, apply just as much to transparent media. Without the help of pilot waves to smooth things out, photons would crash into electrons and atomic nuclei. They would scatter all over the place, and their energy would be absorbed. However, once we include pilot waves into our physics, things become a lot easier to explain.

The presence of a pilot wave around every photon helps smooth out minor irregularities that would otherwise lead to scatter. The pilot wave acts like a dynamic cushion around each photon, guiding them through the atomic lattice of the transparent medium.

Pilot wave guiding a photon through the atomic lattice of a transparent medium

This process greatly distort the shape of the pilot wave. It goes from being a fairly flat wave-front to an elongated sock-like shape. This process requires photons to have a minimum of energy. They have to be big enough to do this. Very small photons are too much affected by their pilot waves to assert this kind of control over them. As a result, low energy photons get reflected by glass.

On the other hand, high energy photons are so big that their pilot waves have too little control over them to get them through. High energy photons crash into atoms. They scatter, and their energy get absorbed.

This explains why glass is only transparent to photons in a certain range of energies. Glass is opaque to photons outside the visible spectrum, both to the high and low energy side.

Another thing to note is that the photons that are in the right energy interval for glass to let them through, all travel the same path. However, the smaller photons which are the most influenced by their pilot waves, travel in a more direct path than larger photons. Large photons veer off to the sides, almost smashing into things as they go, while small photons stay safely in the middle of their pilot wave cushion.

This is why small (red) photons get through transparent media in less time than large (blue) photons.

Finally, we should note that the path through the medium is in a different direction from the path through air. The density of atoms in the medium makes the overall path through it more acute than the path on entry and exit. This phenomenon is referred to as refraction, and the degree to which this happen is referred to as the refraction index.

To understand why a photon's angle of entry into a sheet of plane glass is exactly equal to its angle of exit, we must once again consider the pilot wave. In simple terms, we can say that the process of exit is an exact opposite of entry. Instead of being compressed, the pilot wave expands. The various parts that were compressed on entry expand in a complementary manner on exit.

However, this is only the case for plane glass, where the entry and exit surfaces are in parallel with each other. In the case of a prism, where the surface met by the photon on entry has a different angle from the one met on exit, we get diffraction where photons not only change their direction, but do so to a lesser or greater degree depending on their energy:

Diffraction of light

While all photons refract to the exact same degree, red photons diffract less than blue photons because red photons make smaller rolls into glass, and hence smaller rolls out of glass than blue photons. This is of no consequence when the roll into glass is equal and opposite to the roll out of glass, as is the case with plane glass. However, when the roll into glass is anything but equal and opposite to the roll out of glass, we get a situation in which we have to add the initial roll to the final roll. All photons end up redirected, but with big photons redirected more than small photons.

Path of photons through a plane glass sheet compared to a prism

This does not only explain why prisms diffract white light into all its different colours while plane glass sheets don't diffract light in any way. It also explains the curious fact that diffraction of light happens in its entirety at exit from a prism. There is no diffraction going on inside the prism.