I Hyperfine splitting and relative intensity of spectral lines

victorhugo
Messages
127
Reaction score
5
What is the cause of hyperfine line splitting?
I saw somewhere that it was because of spin quantum number and somewhere else that it was because of how electrons interact in the atom.

And relative intensity of spectral lines?
I'd assume it's due to the probability of electron jumps being more likely in the brighter looking lines and vice-versa.
 
Physics news on Phys.org
Did you check the wikipedia article?

victorhugo said:
I'd assume it's due to the probability of electron jumps being more likely in the brighter looking lines and vice-versa.
I don't think "electron jumps" are a good description, but it is related to transition probabilities, yes.
 
mfb said:
Did you check the wikipedia article?

I don't think "electron jumps" are a good description, but it is related to transition probabilities, yes.
what wikipedia article?
 
victorhugo said:
What is the cause of hyperfine line splitting?
It's because of the interaction between electron and the multipole moments (in most cases the magnetic dipole moment) of the nucleus. The multipole moment causes a perturbation to the electronic orbit in a form of magnetic field.
victorhugo said:
And relative intensity of spectral lines?
I'd assume it's due to the probability of electron jumps being more likely in the brighter looking lines and vice-versa.
Yes, that's a correct idea.
 
Insights auto threads is broken atm, so I'm manually creating these for new Insight articles. Towards the end of the first lecture for the Qiskit Global Summer School 2025, Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, Olivia Lanes (Global Lead, Content and Education IBM) stated... Source: https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/quantum-entanglement-is-a-kinematic-fact-not-a-dynamical-effect/ by @RUTA
If we release an electron around a positively charged sphere, the initial state of electron is a linear combination of Hydrogen-like states. According to quantum mechanics, evolution of time would not change this initial state because the potential is time independent. However, classically we expect the electron to collide with the sphere. So, it seems that the quantum and classics predict different behaviours!
Back
Top