# Can the electromagnetic field be defined for the Compton effect?

As far as I know, the Compton Effect can only be explained by using Quantum Electrodynamics, given an incoming electromagnetic wave there is a probability that a photon with different wavelength than the incoming wave is generated, this effect cannot be explained with classical electrodynamics, which only changes the wave direction but not its wavelength.

My question is, given an incoming wave, we can get the Compton probability density for each possible generated photon, so, can we use these probabilities to figure out the classical electromagnetic field that the Compton Effect will cause?

• One-photon EMF is a volume-dependent quantity and it is useless anyway because we never put it into the classical EOM. – Vladimir Kalitvianski Aug 23 at 7:00
• Classical EM theory can explain a lot about the Compton effect including the wavelength variation with scattering angle. Raman has shown one gets quantitative agreement with experiments under assumption that the scattering electron forward momentum in the field of the primary wave is $h/\lambda$: dspace.rri.res.in/bitstream/2289/2125/1/… – Ján Lalinský Aug 23 at 9:21