Complete treatment of the time evolution of a spontaneously decaying atomic state without ignoring virtual-transition effects

J. Seke

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 1993, vol. 196, issue 3, 441-454

Abstract: It is shown that the application of a self-consistent projection-operator method, developed recently by the author, makes a complete treatment of the sixty-year old problem of spontaneously decaying atomic state possible. In the present treatment all shortcomings of the Weisskopf-Wigner method (two-level atom, rotating-wave and Markov approximations, and the neglect of the term A2 and the retardation and electron-spin effects) are removed. After introducing a new physical real-transition interaction picture (in which the unobservable interaction of the free electron with the vacuum radiation field is eliminated), leading to a natural solution of the renormalization problem, explicit finite analytic results for the whole time evolution in the case of the Lyman-α spontaneous emission are obtained.

Date: 1993
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:196:y:1993:i:3:p:441-454

DOI: 10.1016/0378-4371(93)90207-K

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