Photoelectric effect quantum hypothesis

C. Dewdney, A. Garuccio, A. Kyprianidis, and J. P. Vigier, The anomalous photoelectric effect Quantum potential theory versus effective photon hypothesis, Phys. Lett. A 105A(12), 15-18 (1984). 

To Einstein is due the credit of having been the first to point out that, apart from the law of heat radiation, there are other phenomena which can be explained by means of the quantum hypothesis, but which are unintelligible from the standpoint of classical physics. In the year 1905, Einstein put forward the light quantum hypothesis, and as experimental evidence for it cited the law of the photoelectric effect this we have already dealt with ( 2, p. 69). 

The roots of core and valence level photoemission can be tracked back to the famous article of Einstein explaining the photoelectric effect.164 In this work, he postulated the quantum hypothesis for absorption of radiation by the fundamental equation ... 

Planck s revolutionary idea about energy provided the basis for Einstein s explanation of the photoelectric effect in 1906 and for the Danish physicist Niels Bohr s atomic model of the hydrogen atom in 1913. Their success, in turn, lent support to Planck s theories, for which he received the Nobel Prize in physics in 1918. In the mid-1920s the combination of Planck s ideas about the particle-like nature of electromagnetic radiation and Erench physicist Louis de Broglie s hypothesis of the wavelike nature of electrons led to the formulation of quantum mechanics, which is still the accepted theory for the behavior of matter at atomic and subatomic levels. 

There is no question that the three reports, the photoelectric effect, the special relativity and the Brownian motion published by Einstein in 1905 changed the traditional consciousness of researchers in the 20th century. The report on the photoelectric effect clarified an old problem in the wave theory of light by linking discussions on the nature of light and the quantum hypothesis originating in Planck s study of specific heat. The report on special relativity refuted the ether theory and created an entirely new field. The report on Brownian motion, aimed at the very existence of atoms and molecules, created the theory... 

The year 1913 marks a major climax in the history of science. The application of Planck s quantum hypothesis to blackbody radiation, and later by Einstein to the photoelectric effect, had met with disbelief and in some quarters even with scorn. Bohr s application to the theory of the hydrogen atom compelled belief and worked a revolution in thought. In the following ten years this new knowledge was quickly assimilated and applied with spectacular success to the interpretation of spectra and chemical periodicity. 

Einstein s 1905 paper on the photoelectric effect was the first important application of Planck s quantum hypothesis. Describe Planck s original hypothesis, and explain how Einstein made use of it in his theory of the photoelectric effect... 

Ic. The Photoelectric Effect. The next successful application of Planck s quantum hypothesis was made by Einstein. It was known that, when light falls on a clean metal surface, electrons are emitted. 

Postulation and understanding of wave-particle duality was a controversial topic from the very beginning and is closely enmeshed with the origin and development of the photoelectric effect based on Einstein s hypothesis of light quanta and quantum theory. De Broglie (1924) in a seminal paper explored the reconciliation... 

In spite of this agreement between theory and experiment, not all physicists were willing to accept the quantum hypothesis. Indeed Planck himself believed initially that it applied only to the atomic oscillators in the cavity walls and not to the radiation inside the cavity. However, Einstein (1905) soon showed that the quantum theory could explain certain puzzling features of the photoelectric effect in a very simple way. 

Only after the quantum hypothesis was successfully applied to phenomena other than blackbody radiation did it acquire status as a great new scientific theory. The first of these successes came in 1905 with Albert Einstein s quantum explanation of the photoelectric effect. 

---