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It consists of the shortest wavelength electromagnetic waves, typically shorter than those of X-rays. With frequencies above 30 exahertz (3 × 10 19 Hz) and wavelengths less than 10 picometers (1 × 10 −11 m), gamma ray photons have the highest photon energy of any form of electromagnetic radiation.
Gamma rays, at the high-frequency end of the spectrum, have the highest photon energies and the shortest wavelengths—much smaller than an atomic nucleus. Gamma rays, X-rays, and extreme ultraviolet rays are called ionizing radiation because their high photon energy is able to ionize atoms, causing chemical reactions. Longer-wavelength ...
Thus, higher frequency photons have more energy. For example, a 10 20 Hz gamma ray photon has 10 19 times the energy of a 10 1 Hz extremely low frequency radio wave photon. The effects of EMR upon chemical compounds and biological organisms depend both upon the radiation's power and its frequency.
The energy of this radiation can far exceed that which humans can create, even in the largest particle accelerators (see ultra-high-energy cosmic ray). This radiation interacts in the atmosphere to create secondary radiation that rains down, including x-rays, muons, protons, antiprotons, alpha particles, pions, electrons, positrons, and neutrons.
Most of this energy is released in gamma rays, although some GRBs have extremely luminous optical counterparts as well. GRB 080319B , for example, was accompanied by an optical counterpart that peaked at a visible magnitude of 5.8, [ 93 ] comparable to that of the dimmest naked-eye stars despite the burst's distance of 7.5 billion light years.
Photon energy is the energy carried by a single photon. The amount of energy is directly proportional to the photon's electromagnetic frequency and thus, equivalently, is inversely proportional to the wavelength. The higher the photon's frequency, the higher its energy. Equivalently, the longer the photon's wavelength, the lower its energy.
The radiation emitted covers the entire electromagnetic spectrum and the intensity of the radiation (power/unit-area) at a given frequency is described by Planck's law of radiation. For a given temperature of a black-body there is a particular frequency at which the radiation emitted is at its maximum intensity.
The photon will have frequency ν 0 and energy hν 0, given by: = where h is the Planck constant. Alternatively, if the excited-state atom is perturbed by an electric field of frequency ν 0 , it may emit an additional photon of the same frequency and in phase, thus augmenting the external field, leaving the atom in the lower energy state.