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How can you tell if a transition is Laporte forbidden
Accepted Answer
A transition is Laporte forbidden if it involves a change in parity, meaning a change from a symmetric to an asymmetric orbital or vice versa. This is because the electric dipole operator, which governs the probability of an electronic transition, is odd in parity, while the integral for the transition probability must be non-zero for the transition to occur. Therefore, a transition between orbitals of the same parity (e.g., both s orbitals or both p orbitals) is Laporte forbidden.
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