Recent content by nla7

Thank you. That makes sense now :) I'm thinking that although it is the S component of the photon's J that has a value, because of spin-orbit interaction, it is only J that needs to be conserved and not the individual components S or L. Which is why it can be the electron's L that carries...

I am considering the occurence of an incident circularly polarised EM wave on a ground state hydrogen atom. The result is that the final state of the atomic electron transition will be at m= ±1 depending on the orientation of polarisation (LCP or RCP). I understand that this is due to the...