A Comment on the "Photon position operator with commuting components" by Margaret Hawton

TL;DR

This paper critically examines Hawton's proposed photon position operator, arguing it lacks essential properties for describing photon localization, raising questions about its physical validity and covariance under rotations.

Contribution

It provides a critical analysis showing Hawton's operator does not meet the necessary criteria for a proper photon position operator.

Findings

Hawton's operator does not have the required properties for photon localization.

The operator either describes massless spin zero particles or lacks covariance.

The critique challenges the validity of previous proposals for photon position operators.

Abstract

We show that the position operator with commuting components proposed by M. Hawton [M. Hawton, Phys. Rev. A {\bf 59}, 954 (1999)] and developed in subsequent papers, including the recent ones, does not have the properties required for a photon position operator. Depending on the exact interpretation of the results it either concerns a triplet of massless spin zero particles rather than the photon, or does not have the required covariance properties under space rotations.