Derivation of Wien's displacement law
ID: derivation-of-wien-s-displacement-law
At fixed , substitute into the Planck function:Here is the Planck constant, the Boltzmann constant, and the speed of light. Since , an interior maximum in wavelength is also a stationary point in . A logarithmic derivative givesThe required positive root is . The rearranged equation also has , but that endpoint is not a peak. For , changes sign once, at . Thus first increases and then decreases to negative values, crossing zero exactly once for . Since tends to zero at both endpoints, this stationary point is the unique global maximum. Solving the definition of for wavelength givesThe inverse-temperature dependence follows before any numerical root-finding. More generally for one fixed function , so spectra at all temperatures have the same rescaled shape. This is stronger than a relation between two peak positions. Replacing the denominator by in the Wien approximation would instead give and a peak wavelength about too short.
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