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Zeeman Interaction

The document discusses the Zeeman effect, where an external magnetic field causes energy level splitting of atomic or molecular spectral lines into multiple components. It explains that the magnetic field interacts with both the orbital angular momentum and intrinsic spin of electrons, contributing to the Zeeman splitting. The interaction energy is proportional to the magnetic field strength and the magnetic dipole moment associated with the electron's orbital or spin properties.

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Chirag Goyal
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135 views1 page

Zeeman Interaction

The document discusses the Zeeman effect, where an external magnetic field causes energy level splitting of atomic or molecular spectral lines into multiple components. It explains that the magnetic field interacts with both the orbital angular momentum and intrinsic spin of electrons, contributing to the Zeeman splitting. The interaction energy is proportional to the magnetic field strength and the magnetic dipole moment associated with the electron's orbital or spin properties.

Uploaded by

Chirag Goyal
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Zeeman Interaction

An external magnetic field will exert a torque on a magnetic dipole and the magnetic potential energy which results is

The magnetic dipole moment associated with the orbital angular momentum is given by

For magnetic field in the z-direction this gives

Considering the quantization of angular momentum , this gives equally spaced energy levels displaced from the zero field level by

This displacement of the energy levels gives the uniformly spaced multiplet splitting of the spectral lines which is called the Zeeman effect. The magnetic field also interacts with the electron spin magnetic moment, so it contributes to the Zeeman effect in many cases. The electron spin had not been discovered at the time of Zeeman's original experiments, so the cases where it contributed were considered to be anomalous. The term "anomalous Zeeman effect" has persisted for the cases where spin contributes. In general, both orbital and spin moments are involved, and the Zeeman interaction takes the form

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