Question: A monoatomic atom undergo spontaneous emission. It changes from an excited state
with
to an intermediate state
with
emitting a photon with wave vector
, and then to the ground state
with
emitting a photon with wave vector
. Find the probability that the angle between the two wavevectors to be
.
Ans:
where
Using second order time dependent perturbation theory , we can write the wavefunction in Dirac picture as,
where
with
Since the system has rotational symmetry, so the internal eigenstate is
, where
. The initial photon field is null
. Initially
, so
, so intial state is
and final state is
. Therefore
where to change from state
to
to
, we need two momentum operator, so the first term must be zero. And so
where
is independent of the direction of the emitted photons.
Here
Taking away the radial dependent part, ie, take away
parts,
and define
we know
only if
,
only if
,
only if
So