| [Sorry for the delay. I really had to watch that soccer game and kids don't have school on Sunday.] There is an acceleration distribution, but the acceleration operator is strange. I don't remember the details and a quick google search confirms that it's strange. It's complicated... let's oversimplify some details... In QM the electron must jump from one orbital to another, and the difference in energy is emitted as radiation as a photon. If the electron jumps from A to B, then B must be empty. So if A is the orbital with less energy then it can't emit. Also if B is full, it can't emit. For a big enough system, there are plenty of options for B and you get a very good approximation that is the classic rule that says that accelerating electrons emit photons. There are weird cases, like in a neutron star, there are too many electrons trapped by gravity so all possible B are full, and you have electrons that can't emit. It you want a tabletop experiment, the keyword is "fermion gas" that are gas of fermions (like electrons) that are very cold and very dense and they have a strange repulsion that is not explained classically. It is caused because there are jumps that are forbidden because the destination is full. (If you heat them or give them more room to be diluted, this strange repulsion almost disappears and you can aproximarte them as a classical gas.) > a distribution of radiation? If you measure the radiation far away, you have a distribution of possible colors/energy of the photon, because the electron may choose to jump form A to B1, B2, B3, ... This is like the lines color of gas lamps. If you measure close enough, you have to draw Feynman diagrams and the photons may have a slightly different value of color/energy. But it's complicated and I'm not sure of the details. I guess it's related to the acceleration distribution, but I'm not sure of the details again. --- The easy answer is that "acceleration -> radiation" is only a useful approximation when the system is big enough to ignore the quantum effect. The hard answer is probably that you have to study like 10 years of physics to be sure and explain me the details. :) |