Can free electrons emit a single photon?
it is true that a free electron cant emit or absorb a photon but it is misleading to think that a free electron is totally unaffected by the passage of a light wave. the electron will indeed oscillate but it will always emit exactly the amount of energy that it absorbs. the ‘net’ effect is that it is unaffected.
What happens when a photon hits a free electron?
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. One way of thinking about this higher energy state is to imagine that the electron is now moving faster, (it has just been “hit” by a rapidly moving photon).
Why can a free electron not absorb a photon?
A free electron cannot absorb a photon as it is not possible to satisfy the energy and momentum conservation simultaneously. In Compton effect we have both electron and a photon as the final product and it is then possible to conserved energy and momentum.
Can protons absorb photons?
A system can absorb a photon if the energy of the photon matches an excitation in the system. So the hydrogen atom can absorb a photon if its energy matches one of the frequencies in the hydrogen spectral series. A proton is a composite object and it does have a spectral series.
Can you destroy photons?
Photons are easily created and destroyed. Unlike matter, all sorts of things can make or destroy photons. Similarly, when a photon of the right wavelength strikes an atom, it disappears and imparts all its energy to kicking the electron into a new energy level.
Can you reflect photons?
The photons of the light reflected from a metal (or a dielectric mirror) are identical to the incident ones, apart from the changed propagation direction. The loss of light in the metal means that some fraction of the photons are lost, while the energy content of each reflected photon is fully preserved.
Is it possible to produce a single photon?
The generation of a single photon occurs when a source creates only one photon within its fluorescence lifetime after being optically or electrically excited. An ideal single-photon source has yet to be created.
Can an electron emit two photons?
Two-photon emission (2PE) is a process in which an electron transition between quantum levels occurs through the simultaneous emission of two photons. Two-photon absorption has been widely studied, but 2PE has not been observed in semiconductors so far.