How does an electron jumping down an orbital create photons?
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It’s about conservation of energy.
The energy in this case is related to “how far” the electron is from the nucleus. “Closer” charges have less energy than charges that are farther away. Sort of like how picking up a rock gives it more potential energy, and dropping it releases that energy. The quotes are there because electron orbitals aren’t like planets orbiting the sun. They’re more like 3D standing waves of probability density clouds.
Since the energy being lost is from electromagnetic potential, (or transfer of angular momentum via electromagnetic interaction) and electromagnetism is mediated by photons, the energy is released in the form of a photon.
So to rephrase a bit, it’s not so much that jumping down is the cause of a photon being emitted, or the photon being emitted is the cause of the election jumping down, but rather that both things must happen at the same time as they are part of the same process of releasing energy.
Electrons in higher orbitals have more energy than electrons in lower orbitals. When an electron moves from a higher state to a lower state, it has to lose energy. Since electrons mainly interact with the electromagnetic field, and the electromagnetic field is quantized with photons, the electron releases that extra energy in the form of a photon.
When the electron gets closer to the nucleus it loses angular momentum. This energy is emmitted as a photon. Why a photon specifically does not really have an answer, it is what it is.
Think about a spaceship in orbit around the Earth. If it doesn’t do anything, it’ll stay in that orbit forever. If it wants to move into a lower orbit, it needs to fire its engines to slow itself down (decrease its energy) and get into a lower orbit. The exhaust from firing its engines goes out into space.
A similar thing happens with electrons. In order to get into a lower orbit, they don’t necessarily slow down in terms of their speed, but they need to lower their energy. To do this, they fire out a photon into space.
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