Thanks, can I ask this as a thought experiment?
Suppose I set up a weak laser producing sparse photons at a "known" energy level, say 3.5 +/- units, and beam it at a substrate whose closest orbital jump is 3.0 +/- energy units. I presume from this thread that the laser would not be absorbed and...
Ok, is the "smearing" a quantum indeterminacy thing, or can the energy level of the photon and the energy of the electron jump really be different? If they can really be different, what happens to the residual energy?
Even if the energy levels have non-zero widths, it seems energy would have...
Pretty basic question: If energy levels (say, of an electron) are quantized, how is an interaction resolved wherein incoming energy (say, a photon) is not of an appropriate amount of energy to result in an appropriate response (say, moving from 1s to 2s in a simple hydrogen atom)?
Suppose the...