Spontaneous and stimulated emissions of a preformed quantum free-electron wave function

Abstract

Do the wavepacket-size of free-electron wavefunction and its history have physical effect in its interaction with light? Here we answer this problem by analyzing a QED model, considering both spontaneous and stimulated emission of quantized radiation field. For coherent radiation (Glauber state), we confirm that stimulated emission/absorption of photons has a dependence on wavepacket size that decays when it exceeds the interacting radiation wavelength, consistently and complementarily with Schrodinger equation analysis of wavepacket acceleration in classical electromagnetic field. Furthermore, the stimulated emission of modulated electron wavepacket with coherently-bunched profiles has characteristic harmonic emission spectrum that is also wavepacket size dependent but beyond the frequency cut-off. In either case, there is no wavepacket dependent emission of Fock state radiation, and particularly the vacuum state spontaneous emission is wavepacket-independent. The transition of radiation emission from the classical point-particle limit to the quantum electron wavefunction limit is demonstrated in electron wavepacket representation. It indicates a way for measuring the wavepacket size of single electron wavefunction, and suggests a new direction for exploring light-matter interaction fundamentally.