Ionisation by quantised electromagnetic fields: The photoelectric effect

TL;DR

This paper models the photoelectric effect within a non-relativistic quantum electrodynamics framework, extending previous models to include multiple bound states and complex electron-photon interactions, and highlights the importance of Einstein's energy relation for ionization.

Contribution

It introduces a variant of the quantum electrodynamics model that accounts for multiple bound states and broader electron-photon interactions, providing new insights into ionization probabilities.

Findings

Ionization probability in second order is a weighted sum of single photon terms.

Einstein's energy equality is crucial for nonzero single photon ionization terms.

The model applies to more complex electron states than previous models.

Abstract

In this paper we explain the photoelectric effect in a variant of the standard model of non relativistic quantum electrodynamics, which is in some aspects more closely related to the physical picture, than the one studied in [BKZ]: Now we can apply our results to an electron with more than one bound state and to a larger class of electron-photon interactions. We will specify a situation, where ionisation probability in second order is a weighted sum of single photon terms. Furthermore we will see, that Einstein's equality \[E_{kin}=h\nu-\bigtriangleup E>0\] for the maximal kinetic energy $E_{kin}$ of the electron, energy $h\nu$ of the photon and ionisation gap $\bigtriangleup E$ is the crucial condition for these single photon terms to be nonzero.