Photonic zitterbewegung and its interpretation

In terms of the volume-integrated Poynting vector, we present a quantum field-theory investigation of the zitterbewegung (ZB) of photons, and show that this ZB occurs only in the presence of virtual longitudinal and scalar photons. To present a heuristic explanation for such a ZB, by assuming that the space time is sufficiently close to the flat Minkowski space, we show that the gravitational interaction can result in the ZB of photons.