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Quantum Physics
Photoelectric Effect via QED?
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[QUOTE="bolbteppa, post: 6016641, member: 480664"] Chapter 5 of this book: [URL]https://www.amazon.com/dp/0750633719/?tag=pfamazon01-20[/URL] as one can see in the table of contents preview, discusses the photoelectric effect starting from the first principles of quantum field theory developed in the earlier chapters. I can't find another qft book which discusses the photoelectric effect, or anything from chapter 5 really. For example one cannot find much material in a book like Peskin and Schroeder which discusses material from chapter 5. I am wondering why this is so - what is the point of chapter 5, and what makes it different to what qft books usually discuss, such as Compton scattering, Bremsstrahlung etc...? My guess is that chapters 4 and 5 are discussing bound state problems (Schweber makes the comment that scattering cannot account for bound state problems), and so I am simply facing the same question brought up in: [LIST] [*]"With regard to phenomena, I recall wondering, as a student, why some of the fundamental things I studied in NRQM seemed to disappear in QFT. One of these was bound state phenomena, such as the hydrogen atom. None of the introductory QFT texts I looked at even mentioned, let alone treated, it. It turns out that QFT can, indeed, handle bound states, but elementary courses typically don’t go there. Neither will we, as time is precious, and other areas of study will turn out to be more fruitful. Those other areas comprise scattering (including inelastic scattering where particles transmute types), deducing particular experimental results, and vacuum energy. " [*][URL]http://www.quantumfieldtheory.info/website_Chap01.pdf[/URL] [/LIST] This seems to make sense, e.g. the photoelectric effect does seem to be a bound state problem where an atom emits a photon into the continuous spectrum. However if you actually look through chapter 5, they don't bring up bound states anywhere except a comment in a problem, and begin by discussing an electron emitting a photon in a given 'external field', but they don't treat the EM field as an external classical field since everything is done with second quantization, and they re-derive formulas like dipole radiation from a second quantization perspective, and seem to simply use formulas from perturbation theory. Thus, what is going on in chapter 5, and how does it naturally relate to the discussion one would find in, say, Peskin and Schroeder? Thanks! [/QUOTE]
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Photoelectric Effect via QED?
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