  In the paper, we show that there exists a close analogy between the behavior
of de Broglie matter waves and that of electromagnetic waves inside a hollow
waveguide, such that the guided photons can be treated as free massive
particles subject to a relativistic quantum-mechanical equation. Inspired by
the effective rest mass of guided photons and the zitterbewegung phenomenon of
the Dirac electron, at variance with the well-known Higgs mechanism we present
some different heuristic ideas on the origin of mass.
