Question

What is the difference between Compton effect and photoelectric effect?

Answer 1

Before proceeding to the question let us first know the basics of the topic.The photoelectric effect and the Compton effect are two types of light-matter interactions. Both effects reveal electromagnetic waves' particle nature.

Complete answer:
In the photoelectric effect, a single electron absorbs the entire energy of an incident photon, but in the Compton effect, the incident photon only transfers a portion of its energy to one electron. The photoelectric effect is a low-energy phenomena, and the photons that interact with electrons vanish as soon as they give their energy to them.

The Compton effect, on the other hand, is a mid-energy phenomenon in which photons contact electrons and are scattered. The primary distinction between the Photoelectric Effect and the Compton Effect is this.With the help of a table, we can better grasp the differences between the photoelectric and Compton effects.

The differences between photoelectric effect and the Compton effect are:

Photoelectric effect	Compton effect
1. Albert Einstein explained the photoelectric effect	1. Arthur Compton explained the Compton effect
2. The photon transfers all of its energy to a single electron.	2. A portion of the photon's energy is transferred to a single electron.
3. A low-energy phenomenon is the photoelectric effect.	3. The Compton effect is a phenomenon that occurs at a mid-energy level.
4. After the interaction, the photon vanishes.	4. The dispersed photon has a longer wavelength than the incident photon.

Note: Because the photon interacts with a free electron in Compton scattering, it cannot absorb the complete energy of the photon, as it does in the photo-electric effect, because momentum conservation is violated.