Lyman series

The Lyman series is the set of hydrogen spectral lines produced when an electron transitions from a higher energy level to the ground state, n=1. Its lines lie in the ultraviolet.

Hydrogen atom: The simplest atom, consisting of one proton and one electron. Its allowed electron energies determine every wavelength in the series.
Principal quantum number: A quantum number that labels an electron’s energy level in an atom. The series is defined by transitions from n≥2 to n=1.
Lyman-alpha: The hydrogen spectral line from the n=2 to n=1 transition, near 121.6 nanometers. It is the strongest and most widely used individual line in the series.
Johann Jakob Balmer: A Swiss mathematician who found an empirical formula for visible hydrogen spectral lines in 1885. His formula prompted the search for related hydrogen lines beyond the visible spectrum.
Bohr model: A model of the atom in which electrons occupy quantized orbits with specific energies. It first gave a simple account of hydrogen’s discrete spectral lines.
Ground state: The lowest-energy state available to a physical system. The fixed destination of every transition in the Lyman series.
Lyman-alpha forest: A pattern of absorption lines in quasar spectra caused by intervening neutral hydrogen clouds. Redshifted Lyman-alpha absorption maps hydrogen gas along distant sightlines.
Theodore Lyman: An American physicist who studied ultraviolet spectra and identified hydrogen lines now bearing his name. His ultraviolet spectroscopy established the series experimentally.
Rydberg formula: An equation that predicts the wavelengths of spectral lines in hydrogen and hydrogen-like atoms. It calculates each Lyman wavelength from the initial and final principal quantum numbers.
Excited state: A state with more energy than a system’s ground state. Each Lyman line begins with hydrogen in one of these higher states.

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Hydrogen spectral seriesBroader topic: It is the series with the largest transition energies and ultraviolet wavelengths.