Where does light come from in electron transitions? So when we use light bulbs ...

*

*The heat excites an electron

*The energy makes the electron go to a higher orbital - higher energy level

*The electron comes back to a lower energy state

*Light is emitted in the process

Now:
Does the simple movement of the electron produces a disturbance in the EM field, thus generating a photon?
Or the energy released from transitioning to a lower state disturbs the EM field, thus generating a photon?
None of the above?
I've found explanations on the web claiming that the photon is produced out of nothing, but it sounds strange... Is the EM field 0 with no disturbance? Then you could say the photon comes from nothing... but the field is there, it just has a 0 value
 A: The vacuum is filled with virtual particles. They are a timeless presence in empty spacetime. Real particles can couple to them with their charge like electrons interact by means of a virtual photon. The virtual photon, being off-shell, can deliver the right energy and momenta for the interaction (according to the Dirac deltas for momentum and energy, every energy and momentum transfer having a probability). The virtual particles can couple to other virtual particles which causes higher order Feynman diagram used in the perturbative approach to interactions. A photon can couple to a virtual electron (loop) which can couple to a virtual photon again (or other particles, etc.
Now just as an electron-positron pair can cause a virtual photon, a closed photon loop, to become real (by coupling to it and transfer energy and momentum to it), changing it into two real photons, an electron in an atom falling to a lower energy can promote one part of a virtual loop to a real photon.
Now just realize the virtual particle image is just that. Virtual. A mathematical aid, but the particle image is very useful.
A: The higher orbital is a stationary state where the state doesn’t change over time, and the lower orbital is also a stationary state where the state doesn’t change over time. In each of those states the orbital has some expected electric dipole moment (possibly 0).
During the transition from one state to the other the orbital is not in a stationary state. The state rapidly evolves. During the evolution of the state the dipole moment changes rapidly. This leads to radiation for the same reason that the changing dipole moment in a dipole antenna produces radiation.
