In atomic physics, the fine structure describes the splitting of the spectral lines of atoms due to first order relativistic corrections.
The gross structure of line spectra is the line spectra predicted by non-relativistic electrons with no spin. For a hydrogenic atom, the gross structure energy levels only depend on the principal quantum number n. However, a more accurate model takes into account relativistic and spin effects, which break the degeneracy of the energy levels and split the spectral lines. The scale of the fine structure splitting relative to the gross structure splitting is on the order of (Zα)2, where Z is the atomic number and α is the fine-structure constant, a dimensionless number equal to approximately 7.297×10−3.
The fine structure can be separated into three corrective terms: the kinetic energy term, the spin-orbit term, and the Darwinian term. The full Hamiltonian is given by
Read more about Fine Structure: Kinetic Energy Relativistic Correction, Spin-orbit Coupling, Darwin Term, Total Effect
Famous quotes containing the words fine and/or structure:
“When a girl of today leaves school or college and looks about her for material upon which to exercise her trained intelligence, there are a hundred things that force themselves upon her attention as more vital and necessary than mastering the housewife.”
—Cornelia Atwood Pratt, U.S. author, women’s magazine contributor. The Delineator: A Journal of Fashion, Culture and Fine Arts (January 1900)
“Just as a new scientific discovery manifests something that was already latent in the order of nature, and at the same time is logically related to the total structure of the existing science, so the new poem manifests something that was already latent in the order of words.”
—Northrop Frye (b. 1912)