PHOTO-ELECTRIC EFFECT

65

where we used that k = 0 in the Coulomb gauge. When we use B; p (k) p = (k) p B; p in Equation (2.60) and multiply by the phase space volume d3 x d3 p/(2 )3 = V d3 p/(2 )3 of the outgoing electron, see Equation (1.119), we get dw = e 4 2 (2 ) m
2

1 B; p eikx A 2k

[ (k) p]2 d3 p (2.62)

(EB + Ee EA )

Note that V has canceled as it should. Using the -function we can integrate over the magnitude of the momentum |p| of the electron to get dw = 4 e 8 2 m
2

1 B; p eikx A k

[ (k) p]2 m|p| d

(2.63)

where we have used that Ee = p2 /(2m) and f (p) d3 p (EB + Ee EA k ) = f (p) (EB + Ee EA k ) p2 d|p| d = m f (p) p2 d |p| (2.64) f (xi ) |g (xi )|

= m |p| f (p) d We used that f (x) [g(x)] dx =

i

(2.65)

where the xi are the roots of g(x) = 0. The magnitude of p that makes the argument of the -function zero is given by |p| = 2m EB EA k . The bra B; p in Equation (2.63) is taken to be the product of the bra B representing a singly ionized atom B at rest and the bra p representing an outgoing electron. It will turn out that the cross section peaks strongly in the forward ( 0) direction so we represent the outgoing electron by a plane wave exp(i p x)/ V instead of a spherical wave. The ket A in Equation (2.63) is taken to be the product of the ket A representing the same singly ionized atom at rest and the ket e representing an electron in a hydrogen-like electron state. The latter can be represented in coordinate space as a 1S hydrogen-like wavefunction. We will not approximate the exponential exp(i k x) by its rst few terms as we did in Section 1.4 on (spontaneous) emission because we do not want to limit the range of validity