Sunday, 21 February 2016

quantum mechanics - Fermi's Golden Rule and Density of States


I know Fermi's Golden Rule in the form


Γfi = f2πδ(EfEi)|Mfi|2


where Γfi is the probability transition rate, Mfi are the transition matrix elements.



I'm struggling to do a derivation based on the density of states. I know that under certain circumstances it's a good approximation to replace f with Fρ(Ef)dEf to calculate the transition probability, for some energy range F.


Doing this calculation I obtain


Γfi = ρ(Ef)2πδ(EfEi)|Mfi|2dEf.


Now assuming that the Mfi are constant in the energy range under the integral we get


Γfi = ρ(Ei)2π|Mfi|2.


Now this is absolutely not what is written anywhere else. Other sources pull the ρ(Ef) out of the integral to obtain Fermi's Golden Rule of the form


Γfi = ρ(Ef)2π|Mfi|2


for any f with Ef in F which makes much more physical sense. But why is what I've done wrong? If anything it should be more precise, because I have actually done the integral! Where have I missed something?




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