Electric field operator, quantum electrodynamics

Eigenstates of a crystal, 725 Eigenvalues of quantum mechanical angular momentum, 396 Electrical filter response, 180 Electrical oscillatory circuit, 380 Electric charge operator, total, 542 Electrodynamics, quantum (see Quantum electrodynamics) Electromagnetic field, quantization of, 486, 560... 

There exists another more consistent way of obtaining the electron transition operators. We can start with the quantum-electrodynamical description of the interaction of the electromagnetic field with an atom. In this case we find the relativistic operators of electronic transitions with respect to the relativistic wave functions. After that they may be transformed to the well-known non-relativistic ones, accounting for the relativistic effects, if necessary, as corrections to the usual non-relativistic operators. Here we shall consider the latter in more detail. It gives us a closed system of universal expressions for the operators of electronic transitions, suitable to describe practically the radiation in any atom or ion, including very highly ionized atoms as well as the transitions of any multipolarity and any type of radiation (electric or magnetic). 

It is apparent that for A3, = 0, the electric field component does not contain a product of potential terms. In general the vanishing of this term occurs if there are no longitudinal electric field components. Within the framework of most quantum electrodynamic, or quantum optical, calculations this is often the case. The B(3) field then is a Fourier sum over modes with operators a qaq. The B(3 ) field is then directed orthogonal to the plane defined by A1 and A2. The fourdimensional dual to this term is defined on a time-like surface that has the interpretation, under dyad-vector duality in three dimensions as, as an electric... 

The nature of media effects relates to the fact that, since the microscopic displacement field is the net field to which molecules of the medium are exposed, it corresponds to a fundamental electric field dynamically dressed by interaction with the surroundings. The quantized radiation is in consequence described in terms of dressed photons or polaritons. A full and rigorous theory of dressed optical interactions using noncovariant molecular quantum electrodynamics is now available [25-27], and its application to energy transfer processes has been delineated in detail [10]. In the present context its deployment leads to a modification of the quantum operators for the auxiliary fields d and h, which fully account for the influence of the medium—the fundamental fields of course remain unchanged. Expressions for the local displacement electric and the auxiliary magnetic field operators [27], correct for all microscopic interactions, are then as follows... 

The present derivation of the scattering cross-section is based on a non-relativistic quantum electrodynamic approach. In this picture, the modes of the radiation field are quantized and the electric field is treated as a quantum-mechanical operator that annihilates or creates photons populating the various modes. The field operator is given by... 

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