Re: Is photon a wave packet ?

[William Beaty <billb@ESKIMO.COM>]

On Wed, 15 May 2002, Roger Haar wrote:

> Hi,
>         Doppler broadening often (usually) is much larger
> than the natural line width.

Ok.

Do you have any crude numbers for the natural line width and its
associated wavetrain length?  For, say, the yellow "Sodium line"
transition?

I'm imagining that a crude classical analogy would be the exponential
decay from an LC resonator as it loses stored energy via EM radiation.
So, once a sodium atom has been "struck", what's the time constant for the
falling probability for emitting a photon?  (The time constant of the
"ring down"? )



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