energy levels and how they manifest in light

[gib65]

A particle, vibrating at a certain frequency, can only have descrete amounts of energy determined by E=hf. I'm told that you can have integer multiples of this basic energy amount but not fractional multiples. But what happens to the light given off by this particle if it's a multiple of E=hf? It couldn't increase its frequency because that has to stay the same as f. It couldn't increase its amplitude because that corresponds to a greater number of photons, not the amount of energy carried by each one. So in what way would the light carry more energy if E was a multiple of hf?

[swansont]

A system at an energy of nhf will go, for example, to (n-1)hf (n being an integer) and would emit a photon of hf.

[gib65]

A system at an energy of nhf will go, for example, to (n-1)hf (n being an integer) and would emit a photon of hf.

 

Oh, I see. So a particle vibrating at, say, 3hf can emit three photons, each carrying E=1hf, right?

[YT2095]

good question, I`m fairly sure you dont get one Photon for every level it passes through though.

 

if it`s Normal energy state is n-1 and you excite to n-3 it will collapse right back to n-1 again and give a single Photon, but at a higher frequency, probably in the Lyman series rather that the Balmer series for instance.

 

I could be wrong though???

[swansont]

Oh, I see. So a particle vibrating at, say, 3hf can emit three photons, each carrying E=1hf, right?

 

Tow photons, since the system will have to have 1hf left at the end. (n=0 wouldn't be valid a solution)

 

good question, I`m fairly sure you dont get one Photon for every level it passes through though.

 

if it`s Normal energy state is n-1 and you excite to n-3 it will collapse right back to n-1 again and give a single Photon, but at a higher frequency, probably in the Lyman series rather that the Balmer series for instance.

 

I could be wrong though???

 

Well, we're discussing a more general system, like a harmonic oscillator, where the energy levels are equally spaced. But yes, you could drop more than one level, e.g. go from n=3 to n=1 and emit one photon of 2hf.

 

Real systems become more complicated, because you add in more restrictions, like conservation of angular momentum, that we're ignoring at the moment.