26

ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION AND MATTER

in Equation (1.84) and equating terms with the same power of in the resulting equation (as the equation must be true if is varied) we get the iterative set of equations 0 =
iEn t c(0) = n H1 n e n iEn t c(1) = n (t)H1 n e n

1 i 1 i 1 i

iEn t c (0) n n e n iEn t c (1) n n e n iEn t c (2) n n e n

for 0 for 1 for 2

(1.86) (1.87) (1.88) (1.89)

and so on for larger powers of . The structure of Equation (1.87), Equation (1.88) and Equation (1.89) can be seen. An equation of order n+1 can only be solved if the preceding equation of order n is solved rst. This requires an iterative method that we might call a Bootstrap. Fortunately, we rarely go beyond the rst non-zero result and, with rare exceptions, physicists never prove that the resulting series expansion converges. We (f ) solve for the coefcients c n by multiplying Equation (1.86), Equation (1.87), Equation (1.88), by f from the left to nd c f (t) = 0 c f (t) = i
n (1) (0)

or

cf = constant
i(Ef En )t c(0) n f H1 n e i(Ef En )t c(1) n f H1 n e

(0)

(1.90) (1.91) (1.92) (1.93)

2 c f (t) = i
n

(2)

Note that we multiplied the left and right side of each equation by an appropriate power of in accordance with the power of found in the terms in Equation (1.85). Thus far our results are general. We now specialize to the case where the system is in the state i at some time t1 in the past, and we are asking for the amplitude for the system to be in (m) the state f at a later time t2 . We therefore set at t1 all cn (t1 ) = 0 except that (0) we set ci = 1. The relation in Equation (1.85) shows that at t1 all cn (t1 ) = 0 except that ci (t1 ) = 1, the initial condition. The relation in Equation (1.82) shows that the systems state is = i as desired. To nd the amplitude for the system to be in the state f at t2 we project out the ket f from psi (0) (1) (2) by calculating, using Equation (1.85), cf (t2 ) = cf (t2 ) + cf (t2 ) + 2 cf