Is there a maximum amount of light or photons you can have in a given volume of space? As in photons per cubic centimeter? Or is the nature of light such as to make that a nonsense question?

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Gimme a minute to read through Jay's latest observations...

Since photons are considered massless, I suppose there is practically no limit, though the energy implied would be a limiting factor.

Also they are Bosons, so they are not limited by the Pauli Exclusion Principle.

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"I have a cunning plan that cannot fail."
S. Baldrick

BigDon;849655....Photons are integral spin particles, bosons, and as such are governed by Einstein-Bose statistics. There is no limit. You can pile them up as concentrated as you like, and they won't interfere with each other. Bose comes from S.N.Bose.
On the other hand, half-integral spin particles, fermions, such as electrons, neutrinos...etc, obey Fermi-Dirac statistics, and must be assigned discrete energy levels for each particle.....somewhat akin to the energy level diagram for a hydrogen atom.
Not a nonsense question at all. Pete

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A third rate theory forbids
A second rate theory explains after the fact
A first rate theory predicts...A. Lomonosov

But if enough photons pass through a point could they creat a "gravity field" if even for a split second?

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Hi Big Don,
Given current knowledge, it is not a nonsense question.
The intensity of light is determined by its source, the volume of space
it is in is misleading, space has no volume as such, just dimension.
The intensity of light from an object in space is determined by the energy
it is producing and radiating, so a living star is one thing, steady state
radiation, a dying star becoming a super nova is another. A sudden massive
decrease in thermo nuclear reaction releases in seconds the light trapped
within the star for millenia. That is why it is so bright.
Nokton

Yes, and this is one limit ... when the mass-energy density is so high as to create a black hole.

Well before then, photon-photon interactions would arise ... just how these would limit the density of photons in a given (small) region of space, I'm not sure.

In any case, it's a purely theoretical (or philosophical) exercise ... well before intense photon-photon interactions started to make things interesting, photon-matter interactions would make a real mess of your little piece of space. Anyone care to list the minimum density of space, in terms of particles (other than photons), in the observable universe?

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Nereid, Hi, the the minimum density of space has to be a complete
vacuum, so particles are non existant. However, spacetime as a concept
is still valid, and are we not just about conceps here, but about grasping
a reality that for the most part eludes us.
Nokton.

Indeed.

My comment was intended to get us away from impossible, purely theoretical considerations, and look at 'the real world'.

Inter-galactic space is a far, far better vacuum than anything we can create, here in our labs, today (and likely will remain better than anything we can create, for several decades at least). Yet even in the depths of the biggest voids, there is still ~1 H atom, or ~1 proton and 1 electron, per cubic metre (or is it per cubic mm?). There will also be some 'cosmic rays' passing through, of various energies (I don't recall the expected rate, way out there, but it's certainly not zero). And that's not to mention neutrinos, DM particles (if that's what they are), ...

If you crank up the photon density in such a vacuum, you will get photon-H, photon-electron, photon-cosmic ray interactions that will make a mess of what BigDon is trying to find out about (and, maybe, some very low cross-section neutrino-photon and DM-photon interactions too?) ... IOW there is "a maximum amount of light or photons you can have in a given volume of space", but that maximum has little to do with either photon-photon interactions, or photon-space considerations.

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You not wrong Nereid, and cannot fault your logic above on the passage of
particles passing through a total vacuum. Particles from a super nova or Gamma rays from the birth throes of a super massive black hole.
Just suggest to you, that everything has a limit, once that limit is reached
something else comes into play, in this case the ultimate density of light
we are questioning has to have a limit. My point then is, then what?
Do not misunderstand me Nereid, I, like you, seek understanding.
Nokton.