Energy transitions are classified according to spectral series such as Balmer, Lyman, Paschen, etc., which assume a single transition between two non-contiguous levels (except the first transition). What the question really means is, can cascading transitions from one level to another, emitting a photon at each contiguous level, occur or have been observed?
Muhammad: Thanks for your answer. I suspected that was the case, although the literature seems to focus on the transition series. Your answer leads to a few secondary questions. Do cascade transitions occur in all cases of excitation, but not always observed? Or do they occur under some circumstances and not others? If the latter, do we know why? I am doing investigative research on subatomic energy exchanges and your answers would be most helpful. Thank you.
Dear Muhammad,
Thanks for your prompt and very helpful answer. I took this long to thank you because, since your answer had satisfied my inquiry, I was looking into closing the thread. I was informed by the Community Support Service at RG, that it is not possible to close a Q&A thread and was given some kind of reasonable justification for it. I'm glad I took this long because while searching the Internet further on the cascade transitions subject, I found a couple of places that mentioned that transitions from the first excited state of hydrogen to its ground state take about 10^-8 seconds. It is fascinating to me how a seemingly spontaneous event can take a repeatable amount of time. So if I may impose on your amiability once more, is this relaxation period a calculated value or an observed one? I would also appreciate if you can point me to any place that can inform me on the subject of hydrogen transition relaxation times as a treatise, if there is one, I tried for many hours searching the Internet to find more information on the subject to no avail. In any case, my thanks again. Bernardo.
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