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The term is commonly used for the energy levels of the electrons in atoms, ions, or molecules, which are bound by the electric field of the nucleus, but can also refer to energy levels of nuclei or vibrational or rotational energy levels in molecules.
An energy level can be measured by the amount of energy needed to unbind the electron from the atom, and is usually given in units of electronvolts (eV). The lowest energy state of a bound electron is called the ground state, i.e., stationary state , while an electron transition to a higher level results in an excited state. [ 88 ]
The energy level of each orbital increases as its distance from the nucleus increases. The sets of orbitals with the same n value are often referred to as an electron shell. The minimum energy exchanged during any wave–matter interaction is the product of the wave frequency multiplied by the Planck constant .
The energy necessary to remove an electron from its shell (taking it to infinity) is called the binding energy. Any quantity of energy absorbed by the electron in excess of this amount is converted to kinetic energy according to the conservation of energy. The atom is said to have undergone the process of ionization.
The term originated in 1903 when Ernest Rutherford began to speak of the possibility of atomic energy. [1] H. G. Wells popularized the phrase "splitting the atom", [citation needed] before discovery of the atomic nucleus. Atomic energy includes: Nuclear binding energy, the energy required to split a nucleus of an atom.
The shifts in the energy of the highest j states can thus bring the energy of states of one level closer to the energy of states of a lower level. The "shells" of the shell model are then no longer identical to the levels denoted by n , and the magic numbers are changed.
In atomic physics, hyperfine structure is defined by small shifts in otherwise degenerate electronic energy levels and the resulting splittings in those electronic energy levels of atoms, molecules, and ions, due to electromagnetic multipole interaction between the nucleus and electron clouds.
The clamped nucleus Hamiltonian, which is also often called the electronic Hamiltonian, [3] [4] describes the energy of the electrons in the electrostatic field of the nuclei, where the nuclei are assumed to be stationary with respect to an inertial frame.