[Physics] Why do electrons fall from a high excitation to a lower one

atomic-physicselectronsenergyorbitalsstatistical mechanics

If when you shine a photon into an atom for example, and this excites an electron to a higher energy level, do the electron(s) keep going higher the more light you shine, and is there an energy limit, if so why?

Secondly, if you then stop shining light, why will the electrons fall back to a lower level? Will they at all? And why? it seems arbitrary that they will unless acted on by something else.

If they do fall back, how long does it take till they do?

I am taking QM but have not reached this understanding yet.

Best Answer

The answer is thermodynamics, and the assumption that you're working in a colder environment than the temperature corresponding to a Planck distribution where your photons would be "on average" fairly present. In other words, inside a star, where it is hotter, the atoms are NOT in their ground state most of the time - in fact, if it is hot enough, they are in their "highest state" which is an ionised state: you have a plasma. It is simply because most atomic matter has energy levels with differences that are much larger than the average photon energies at "room temperature" (about 26 milli-eV) that we tend to say that atoms and molecules are in their ground states. It is because at these low temperatures, it is statistically favorable to have energy spread out more than in concentrated excited states.

BTW, you can see that with rotational states of molecules: at room temperature, these are usually NOT in their ground state and excited rotational states don't "decay to ground state". It is because their energy levels are below 26 meV.

So when you "shine light on an atom" in a cold environment, you put it out of thermodynamic equilibrium, and it will tend back to equilibrium which is its ground state. When you "shine light on an atom" in a hot environment, it will not fall back to its ground state, because that's not its equilibrium state.

An atom in a cold environment will decay to ground state through spontaneous emission, which has an exponential time decay that is depending on the specific state and is quite difficult to calculate.