Understanding Electron Volts, Temperature & Boltzmann's Constant

Join the discussion
Ask a follow-up here, or get your own question answered by working scientists, mathematicians and engineers — people, not an autocomplete.
Real named experts · corrections over time · the nuance an AI answer skips
1 reply · 4K views
brydustin
Messages
201
Reaction score
0
I need the electron volt in atomic units (mainly because I need "atomic unit" temperature).
I believe that one atomic unit of temperature is eV (electron volts) / kB (Boltzmann's constant). So I know that the elementary charge e = 1 = h-bar.

How do i get eV, temp, Boltmann's constant, length, time, and energy in this form of units? PLEASE don't post the wikipedia article, that won't help. I'd really appreciate an answer with numerical values, thanks.
 
Physics news on Phys.org
In the "atomic units" used in chemistry, the atomic energy unit is 1 a.u. [Energy] = 1 Hartree. A Hartree is two Rydbergs, so 1 a.u. [Energy] = 2 * 13.605... eV.

What is the problem with the Wikipedia article? E.g. from the tables in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_units
you could have read off the same thing. Similarly, taking from the table,
1 a.u. [Length] = 1 BohrRadius = 0.5291...×10^{-10} m
or
1 a.u. [Temperature] = 3.1577...×10^{5} K