Hamiltonian treatment of optical emission from irradiated metals

A complete Hamiltonian formulation is presented of optical and ultraviolet emission from thin and thick metal foils irradiated by electrons. While the classical theory is limited to the treatment of emission by high energy electrons, the present treatment does not suffer from that limitation. It is shown how one can incorporate into the theory the effects of the crystal potential. Explicit results are given for a very simple model of crystal potential and show that quantum corrections are necessary to avoid unphysical divergences which would occur if one neglected these effects.