Selection rule by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
phys.libretexts.org/Courses/University_of_California_Davis/UCD%3A_Physics_9HE_-_Modern_Physics/06%3A_Emission_and_Absorption_of_Photons/6.2%3A_Selection_Rules_and_Transition_Times has some very good mentions:
So it appears that if a hydrogen atom emits a photon, it not only has to transition between two states whose energy difference matches the energy of the photon, but it is restricted in other ways as well, if its mode of radiation is to be dipole. For example, a hydrogen atom in its 3p state must drop to either the n=1 or n=2 energy level, to make the energy available to the photon. The n=2 energy level is 4-fold degenerate, and including the single n=1 state, the atom has five different states to which it can transition. But three of the states in the n=2 energy level have l=1 (the 2p states), so transitioning to these states does not involve a change in the angular momentum quantum number, and the dipole mode is not available.
So what's the big deal? Why doesn't the hydrogen atom just use a quadrupole or higher-order mode for this transition? It can, but the characteristic time for the dipole mode is so much shorter than that for the higher-order modes, that by the time the atom gets around to transitioning through a higher-order mode, it has usually already done so via dipole. All of this is statistical, of course, meaning that in a large collection of hydrogen atoms, many different modes of transitions will occur, but the vast majority of these will be dipole.
It turns out that examining details of these restrictions introduces a couple more. These come about from the conservation of angular momentum. It turns out that photons have an intrinsic angular momentum (spin) magnitude of , which means whenever a photon (emitted or absorbed) causes a transition in a hydrogen atom, the value of l must change (up or down) by exactly 1. This in turn restricts the changes that can occur to the magnetic quantum number: can change by no more than 1 (it can stay the same). We have dubbed these transition restrictions selection rules, which we summarize as:
Mordell's theorem by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
The number of points may be either finite or infinite. But when infinite, it is still a finitely generated group.
TODO example.
This is a general philosophy that Ciro Santilli, and likely others, observes over and over.
Basically, continuity, or higher order conditions like differentiability seem to impose greater constraints on problems, which make them more solvable.
Some good examples of that:
Fourier transform by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
Continuous version of the Fourier series.
Of course, every function defined on a finite line segment (i.e. a compact space).
Therefore, the Fourier transform can be seen as a generalization of the Fourier series that can also decompose functions defined on the entire real line.
As a more concrete example, just like the Fourier series is how you solve the heat equation on a line segment with Dirichlet boundary conditions as shown at: Section "Solving partial differential equations with the Fourier series", the Fourier transform is what you need to solve the problem when the domain is the entire real line.
Laplace transform by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
Video 1.
The Laplace Transform: A Generalized Fourier Transform by Steve Brunton (2020)
Source. Explains how the Laplace transform works for functions that do not go to zero on infinity, which is a requirement for the Fourier transform. No applications in that video yet unfortunately.
Hyperplane by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
Generalization of a plane for any number of dimensions.
Kind of the opposite of a line: the line has dimension 1, and the plane has dimension D-1.
In , both happen to coincide, a boring example of an exceptional isomorphism.

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