PHOTON SCATTERING

67

If we assume that the incident photon is unpolarized we must average over the two polarizations by summing over and dividing the result by 2. To do the summation over we chose the z-axis parallel to k and 1 (k) parallel to the x-axis and 2 (k) parallel to the y-axis. Thus p = |p| (sin cos , sin sin , cos ), 1 (k) = (1, 0, 0), and 2 (k) = (0, 1, 0). We nd that
1 2 2 2 2 2 2 [ (k) p]2 = 1 2 (sin cos + sin sin ) = 1 2

=1

sin2

(2.71)

and

d = 2 2 Z5 8 a 2 0 d

Ee m

7 2

sin2 (1 v cos )4

(2.72)

This is the desired result for the photo-electric effect. The derivation and the result shows all the manifestations of Quantum Physics. For example, the energy of the outgoing electrons does not increase when one increases the intensity of the incident light. We note that the cross section is not 8 a2 0 , not even close, because there is a factor (and more). The cross section is zero for = 0 which makes sense because when p is parallel to k we have that (k) p = 0 (the (k) are perpendicular to k) and the cross section in Equation (2.69) is seen to be proportional to [ (k) p]2 . If the energy k of the incident photon is increased, the energy Ee and the velocity v of the outgoing electron both increase, and the cross section starts peaking more and more in the forward direction ( = 0) and it decreases. At sufciently high photon energy the cross section will be so small that it will be overtaken by the cross section for e+ e pair production which starts to be signicant when k is well above the threshold of twice the electron mass. Our non-relativistic result in Equation (2.72) is not correct for such high energies and a relativistic calculation is called for.

2.4 PHOTON SCATTERING 2.4.1 Amplitudes

Photon scattering distinguishes itself from the photo-electric effect of the previous section by the fact that there is a photon in the nal state as well as in the initial state. Thus we consider +AB+ (2.73)

This process is of great importance in condensed matter, biophysics, and other elds of research because, as we shall see, the outgoing photon carries information about the characteristics of the target. We distinguish three cases: elastic scattering with photon energies of the order of the