Can an electron decay to two photons?
If an electron decays to two photons, it would be violating the law of conservation of charge. A photon is a quantum of energy. It does not have any charge.
Can two photons give energy to a single electron?
yes, you can get “two photon absorption” — suppose one photon alone doesn’t have enough energy to excite the electron (e.g. between two molecular orbitals) but two photons combined have exactly the right energy.
Can electrons decay into neutrinos?
The electron would decay into a photon and neutrino if the law of electric charge conservation is not respected. Such a decay would cause vacancy in closed shells of atoms giving rise to emission of x-rays and Auger electrons.
What happens if 2 electrons collide?
Colliding two electrons will always produce two scattered electrons, and it may sometimes produce some photons from initial and final state radiation. Rarely some extra particle-antiparticle pair (like electron and positron) can pop up.
Can electron emit photon?
When the electron changes levels, it decreases energy and the atom emits photons. The photon is emitted with the electron moving from a higher energy level to a lower energy level. The energy of the photon is the exact energy that is lost by the electron moving to its lower energy level.
What happens when electron absorbs photon?
When an electron is hit by a photon of light, it absorbs the quanta of energy the photon was carrying and moves to a higher energy state. Electrons therefore have to jump around within the atom as they either gain or lose energy.
Can you see one photon?
Yes. In fact, photons are the only things that humans can directly see. A photon is a bit of light.
Can a photon hit another photon?
Since light itself does not have electric charge, one photon cannot directly interact with another photon. Instead, they just pass right through each other without being affected. In this process, the energy of the photon is completely transformed into the mass of the two particles.
Can an electron emit more than one photon at a time?
This can happen over and over again, so yes, a single electron can emit more than one photon over time. As long as the atom stays intact and there continue to be photons of sufficient energy available to push the electron into a higher energy orbital, there is no limit to the number of times this can occur.
Why do photons have the same energy at different frequencies?
One could argue that all photons have the same energy at whichever frequency but when you change the frequency, an electron could simply absorb more photons, thus gaining more energy. More than one photon can be absorbed, but the probability is minute for usual intensities.
Why does the linear process always dominate in the electromagnetic spectrum?
The intuitive reason is, that the linear process (an electron absorbs one photon) is more or less “unlikely” (as the coupling between the em. field and electrons is rather weak), so a process where two photons interact is “unlikely” 2 and thus strongly suppressed. So for small intensities the linear process will dominate distinctly.