Zeeman effect

The splitting or shifting of atomic or molecular spectral lines caused by an external magnetic field changing the energies of their states. Its patterns reveal magnetic interactions and field strengths.

Zeeman Hamiltonian: The interaction energy operator for a magnetic moment in an external magnetic field. Its coupling between the field and atomic magnetic moments produces the level shifts behind the effect.
Atomic spectrum: The set of frequencies of light emitted or absorbed by atoms as they change energy states. The Zeeman effect modifies the spectral lines whose frequencies encode atomic energy differences.
Normal Zeeman effect: A three-component spectral-line splitting pattern arising when electron spin does not affect the relevant angular-momentum coupling. It is the simplest limiting pattern produced by a magnetic field.
Solar magnetograph: An instrument that maps solar magnetic fields by measuring polarization and splitting in spectral lines. It uses Zeeman signatures to infer the strength and direction of solar fields.
Pieter Zeeman: A Dutch physicist who discovered magnetic-field-induced spectral line splitting in 1896. His experiments gave the phenomenon its name and its first clear demonstration.
Landé g-factor: A dimensionless factor describing how an atomic state's magnetic moment relates to its angular momentum. It sets the size of magnetic level shifts for a given state.
Orbital angular momentum: Quantum angular momentum associated with a particle's spatial motion around a center. Its magnetic moment contributes to the field-dependent energies of atomic states.
Anomalous Zeeman effect: Magnetic splitting with more complex component patterns because electron spin contributes to atomic angular momentum. Most observed atomic patterns require spin and cannot be described by the normal effect alone.
Stellar magnetism: The magnetic fields generated or sustained by stars and their surrounding plasma. Zeeman broadening and polarization reveal fields in stars too distant for direct measurement.
Hendrik Lorentz: A Dutch physicist whose electron theory explained the simplest observed magnetic splitting of spectral lines. His classical interpretation linked Zeeman's observation to oscillating charged particles.

Linked from 64 pages