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I have a few questions on the different types of phenomena of light and matter interaction. I understand there are generally 5 types of ideas. Diffraction, reflection, absorption, emission and refraction.

I want to focus on absoprtion, when a ligh wave is incident on an atom. The electron cloud of the atom is distorted shown in the image below. Can the electron only move to a different band energy level if the absorbed wave is equivalent to the difference in energy between the band gaps? What happens when the wave length equivalence of energy does not match the band gap? Does the electron cloud essentially oscillate? When the electron cloud oscillates, does it contribute to reflection of the incident light wave?

Lets assume the inbound electric field excites the electron to a higher different band, when the electric field reverse in the light wave. Does the electric field contribute to transitioning from a higher band to a lower band(emission of EM radiation)?

I find it difficult to discover resources which cover some of these fundamentals. If anyone has any suggestions on books which cover these topics instead of explaining to feel. That would also be greatly appreciated

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ThreadBucks
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  • Im not too deep into QM but i know the shapes of the orbitals in the sub shells. But the properties of the sub shells im not so aware of apart from the higher the greatre the energy of the electron – ThreadBucks Dec 29 '21 at 14:36
  • As normal people, we dont have the resources to discover these relations. And so we need to rely on the explaining and testing procedures of others to do so. These relations also cannot be derived from fundamental logic, so we hit a dead end. Our best solution is to speculate the possibilities – ThreadBucks Dec 29 '21 at 14:45
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    You might start with Absorption spectroscopy from Wikipedia. This may also help. How can a red light photon be different from a blue light photon? – mmesser314 Dec 29 '21 at 15:36
  • @zltn.guba, Diagrams that show electrons as dots occupying spaces on concentric rings still can be useful. It's hard enough to render and visualize the proper shape of even a single orbital. Any attempted rendering of eight distinct, overlapping orbitals would be pointless–impossible to visualize. OP's drawings don't add much to the discussion, but they do illustrate the idea of something moving from one level to another level. – Solomon Slow Dec 29 '21 at 17:48

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