1. In spontaneous emission, the incident photon
a. is not required
b. must match the energy difference between electronic energy states
c. results in two photons being emitted
There are 2 types of emission processes.
In stimulated emission, an incident photon of frequency ט stimulates the atom to make a transition from the higher state to the lower energy state and emit another photon of frequency ט that is in phase with the first photon. The second photon is in phase because the first photon causes the electron charge of the atom to oscillate in phase with it and this oscillation causes the second photon to be in phase with the first. So one photon comes in and two photons leave.
In spontaneous emission the excited atom spontaneously decays to the lower energy state and emits a photon of frequency ט. One can regard this as emission stimulated by zero point vacuum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field.
So In spontaneous emission, the incident photon a. is not required.
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