The phenomenon of electrons being emitted from a metal when struck by incident electromagnetic radiation. Explanation of the photoelectric effect was one of the first triumphs of quantum mechanics. In his famous paper of 1905, Einstein Eric Weisstein's World of Biography extended Planck's Eric Weisstein's World of Biography quantum hypothesis by postulating that quantization was not a property of the emission mechanism, but rather an intrinsic property of the electromagnetic field. Using this hypothesis, Einstein Eric Weisstein's World of Biography was able to explain the observed phenomenon that the maximum kinetic energy K of emitted electrons varied with frequency of incident radiation as
where h is Planck's constant, is a characteristic energy associated with a given metal and called the
work function, c is the speed of light, and is the wavelength. This is exactly the result
expected if photons are quantized with energies
Einstein Eric Weisstein's World of Biography was awarded the 1922 Nobel prize in physics for this explanation.
Compton Effect, Electron, Photomultiplier Tube, Photon, Work Function
References
Bube, R. H. Photoelectronic Properties of Semiconductors. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Einstein, A. Ann. Phys. 17, 132, 1905.
Grometstein, A. A. "The Photoelectric Effect." Ch. 6 in The Roots of Things: Topics in Quantum Mechanics. New York: Kluwer, pp. 183-195, 1999.
Millikan, R. A. Phys. Rev. 7, 18, 1916.
Pais, A. Subtle is the Lord: The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 378-382, 1982.
Thomson, J. J. Phil. Mag. 48, 547, 1899.
Weisstein, E. W. "Books about Photoelectric Effect." http://www.ericweisstein.com/encyclopedias/books/PhotoelectricEffect.html.
