Do photons lose energy due to interaction with the particles in a medium? If yes, then does the frequency of the component electromagnetic waves change? ( since energy of light is directly proportional to it's frequency)

snaketao0g

snaketao0g

Answered question

2022-10-14

Do photons lose energy due to interaction with the particles in a medium? If yes, then does the frequency of the component electromagnetic waves change? ( since energy of light is directly proportional to it's frequency)

Answer & Explanation

clietsoriergono

clietsoriergono

Beginner2022-10-15Added 5 answers

It is possible for light to be absorbed in a medium (most real world materials are not perfectly transparent). When this happens, most individual photons are fully absorbed - the ones that are not absorbed continue with the same energy.
The one exception to this: there are certain scattering mechanisms in solids (most notably, Compton scatter and Raman scatter) in which a photon scatters off an electron, and only part of its energy is passed on to the electron. Such a photon then continues in a new direction, and with less energy (longer wavelength). For visible light, the probability of Compton scatter is extremely small - most interactions of photons with matter in the 400 nm - 800 nm range result in absorption.
Also, because the energy of the scattered photon is related to the energy of the incident photon by the Compton equation:
E = E 1 + E m 0 c 2 ( 1 cos θ ) )
When E m 0 c 2 , very little energy will be lost according to this equation: in the limit, this results in Thomson scatter, where no energy is exchanged. In situations where electrons are sufficiently bound to their atoms that the energy of the photon is insufficient to knock them free, this approximation becomes exact: the electron can't absorb "just a little bit" of energy, as that is quantum-mechanically forbidden.
Raman scattering on the other hand provides a mechanism for inelastic scattering in the visible and near-UV regime - so yes, some photons will lose part of their energy and keep going. Raman spectroscopy is used for material characterization especially because it's so specific in its mechanism (and there are no other mechanisms that would cause scatter, and that would drown the result).

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