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I understand that electrons cannot join already filled orbitals. I also understand that in case there's a hole in a lower orbit [1], an electron can emit a photon and change its orbit (e.g., L->K).

What is the physics that prevents an electron from emitting that same photon but keeping its orbit when there's no lower orbit with a hole? I.e. what kind of physics prevents an electron from losing energy within the same orbital? Is it just the lack of trigger for that to happen?

My naive assumption would be that since an electron can emit a photon then there's a probability that that could happen at any time. And since the electron would have nowhere else to go, it would stay at the same orbital.

[1] I'm ignoring spins for simplicity.

V13
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An orbital is a legacy name for the state of a given electron within an atom from times when we thought that electrons orbit a nucleus like planets orbit the sun. Photons are emitted by electrons changing their internal state, or as one could say: changing their orbitals. Each orbital is directly related to the electron's energy, so when that energy is changing, then an orbital also has to change. But once again, what is really changing is the state of the electron and the idea of orbitals is just a useful analogy.

Noct
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To conserve energy it emits a photon In an excited state the electron is not much stable to achieve a more stable state i.e more negative energy the electron jumps to a lower orbital.since the energy of electron should remain conserved by achieving more -ve energy it emits a photon of positive energy (photons always have +ve energy).It specifically emits a photon since electrons interact electromagnetically.It is possible for an electron to emit photon as long as it is excited state.

Now what prevents an electron from emitting a photon is that it does not lose its energy in certain configurations of angular momentum and velocity and radius.In that special numbers allowed for an electron in the atom of angular momentum.The electron resonates and it is what the resonance probability that you call as manefistation of an electron that is an orbital

Maanik Khurana
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