With the help of the quantum theory of radiation, it is shown that the stimulated radiation from an atom has the same direction and phase dependence as the incident stimulating radiation.
The coherence and directional properties of stimulated and spontaneous emission can be understood without a knowledge of quantum electrodynamics. This paper presents a semiclassical description of the interaction between a free atom and a weak optical field under conditions of either a stimulated emission or a stimulated absorption resonance. It is shown that, under certain conditions, the stimulated or spontaneous radiation fields emitted from a sample of atoms will propagate in the same direction as the incident beam, will be coherent with the incident beam, and will have the correct phase to provide amplification or attenuation.
The basic phenomena of interaction between atoms and e.m. fields can be discussed in some detail without the need of a detailed model of the atom. Absorption and stimulated emission of radiation can be explained satisfactorily by the theory, where a classical electromagnetic wave provides a time-dependent perturbation to the energy of the atomic electrons. Laser radiation appears to a very good approximation to be a classical travelling wave of well-defined amplitude and phase. The radiation produced by a continuous laser is a good approximation to a coherent state. For conventional sources of radiation, the interaction energy is small compared with the energy an electron possesses by virtue of the attraction to the atomic nucleus, so perturbation theory produces quite acceptable results. The quantum mechanical analogy to the distortion of the classical charge cloud is given by the writing down of a general state function for the system, Ψ.
In the study of light transmision and absorption in quantum mechanics, it can'it get satisfactory results to explain the external e. m. field by classical treatment. For example, it can't explain why the stimulated waves are in the same as the stimulating waves in frequency, phase, polarizing state and propagation-direction, etc. the probability of spontaneous radiation-transition can't be obtained directly from the theories of quantum mechanics, unless we draw support from Einstein's phenomenological theory. Especially, the first problem is the foundation of laser theories, and such a problem in normal quantum mechanics and laser theories has not been solved thoroughly. So in this paper we present a full quantum mechanical proof, i. e. to explain both the particals and e. m. field by quantizing treatment, so as to get a quite satisfactory result.