Choose polar angle from the acceleration direction. Then . Integrating over the solid angle gives , and hence the specified normalization gives Larmor formula
This uses the source's convention for radiated power; standard SI normalization has an additional factor in both given power formulas.
To leading order when , neglect the loss while computing the head-on trajectory. Mechanical energy conservation gives and acceleration magnitude . On each leg,
The incoming and outgoing legs contribute equally. Multiplying the power by this time element, adding both legs, and assuming the integral converges gives
Using the unperturbed turning point is justified at this order in the small radiative loss, for a regular turning trajectory.
Let . The exact frequency has expansion . The ratio , while the coefficient of the orthogonal state is uniformly . Hence the supplied solution reduces to
with phase error , which is over one cycle. This is the adiabatic approximation: the system remains in the instantaneous positive-energy eigenstate, with energy .
Thus the dynamic phase is and the geometric phase is , in the gauge for printed in the PDF. For one cycle , the Berry phase is
minus half the solid angle swept by the field direction.
To calculate the requested integral, use . It has ; its radial and polar-angle connection components vanish in this gauge. Along the circle in parameter space, runs from zero to , so , agreeing with the exact-solution limit.
Use the same physical normalization for both fields. Part (b) has , so the common energy flux prefactor cancels. The differential cross-section for scalar wave scattering is
The far-field pattern has dimensions of length in this normalization, so the differential cross-section for scalar wave scattering has dimensions of area per unit solid angle. Only the scattered field is used in this ratio; interference between the incident and scattered fields is a different contribution to the total field's energy flux.
Take an unresolved spherical planet at Euclidean distance , with uniform surface temperature , stationary isotropic emission, and no intervening extinction. Isothermality does not by itself imply blackbody radiation; first derive the geometric result for a uniform emergent specific intensity .
The observer sees the projected disc with apparent solid angle . Integrating its specific intensity over that angle gives the observed spectral radiative flux
where is the small angle to the detector normal. For a blackbody, , and the Stefan–Boltzmann law gives . Hence
Equivalently, the surface radiative flux is and the luminosity of a spherical blackbody is , leading to the same result by inverse-square dilution. A uniform wavelength-dependent emissivity multiplies the spectral formula; an atmospheric spectrum can require a full angular radiative transfer integral rather than a single Planck function.
Consider a narrow bundle of rays between two surface elements separated by in a transparent, stationary Euclidean vacuum. Let the ray make angles to the respective surface normals. The receiving element subtends solid angle at the emitter. By the definition of specific intensity, the beam power in frequency interval is
At the receiving end the source subtends , so the identical power is
In the absence of absorption, emission or frequency shifts, conservation of energy equates these expressions:
This vacuum conservation of specific intensity also follows directly from the radiative transfer equation . The apparent solid angle of an unresolved source shrinks as , so its integrated observed radiative flux still follows the inverse-square law. Specific intensity and unresolved flux are different quantities.
The vacuum and frequency assumptions are essential: absorption and emission change specific intensity, and gravitational or cosmological redshift conserves along a ray instead of itself. A fixed telescope aperture observing an unresolved object also cannot infer constant total received power from intensity conservation.
Use a stationary, non-streaming tracer population with spherical symmetry in its full velocity distribution. In particular, the mean velocities vanish, the mixed covariances vanish, and the two tangential components have equal velocity dispersions. Write
Here is the variance of one tangential component. In the alternative convention using the sum of both tangential variances, the same velocity-anisotropy parameter is . These definitions agree; they must not be mixed by inserting an extra factor of two.
The time derivative and mean-velocity terms in the supplied Jeans equation vanish, as do its angular mixed-moment terms. Its remaining geometric term is . Thus the Spherical Jeans equation becomes
The no-streaming assumption excludes a steady radial flow; stationarity of the density alone would not remove its advective terms.
By the shell theorem, the gravitational potential of a spherical mass distribution satisfies . Expanding the derivative above, dividing by , and using logarithmic derivatives gives
The tracer density need not be the density of the gravitating matter. The circular speed is , whether or not the tracers themselves follow circular orbits.
Now let be constant, , and . With , the Spherical Jeans equation reads
For a power-law ansatz , , so . Therefore the scale-free spherical Jeans solution is
The positivity condition is necessary for this particular solution to be a physical velocity dispersion.
There is a boundary condition implicit in selecting this solution. The integrating factor gives, when ,
The homogeneous term represents an additional radial-pressure boundary contribution. It is removed, for example, by requiring at infinity. Under that condition,
and convergence requires , giving the boxed result. If , the solution instead has the logarithmic form
so the quoted constant proportionality does not apply. A finite outer boundary can retain a homogeneous term even when .
To derive the heliocentric projection of a spherical velocity dispersion, put the Sun at vector of length , and a tracer at . Its heliocentric line of sight is
If is the angle between and the Galactocentric radial direction, then
After correction for the Sun's motion, the intrinsic covariance matrix has eigenvalues in the local spherical basis. Projection onto the line of sight therefore gives
At fixed , and are constant across the spherical shell. Averaging its squared line of sight velocity, with zero mean, gives
For a uniformly sampled Galactocentric shell, the solid angle measure makes uniform on , giving the geometric correction for heliocentric velocity dispersion
To evaluate it, set and , and divide the integrand:
The odd term integrates to zero, while . For , , and , this gives
The removable limit at is . As , , while as , . If , and the observed velocity dispersion is exactly radial. For isotropic velocities, , the correction vanishes at every radius.
The averaging measure matters. If directions are instead uniform in heliocentric solid angle at a fixed Galactocentric radius , let be the angle between the line of sight and . Geometry gives , so that particular weighting gives exactly. The logarithmic expression above uses uniform tracer weighting on a Galactocentric shell. For an observational sample, use its actual angular selection weights in ; the boxed dispersion relation remains valid.
Interstellar dust both hides and reveals galaxies. Absorption and scattering remove short-wavelength photons from a line of sight, causing interstellar extinction, reddening, anisotropic scattering, and polarization. These effects obscure embedded star formation, bias luminosities, colours, stellar masses, and star-formation rates, and can make an edge-on or dusty galaxy appear older and fainter. Dust also converts absorbed ultraviolet and optical power into far-infrared and submillimetre thermal radiation. That reradiation exposes otherwise hidden star formation, constrains dust temperature and mass, and helps map cold molecular material; polarization traces magnetic-field orientation. Grain surfaces also catalyse molecular-hydrogen formation, while photoelectric emission from grains heats interstellar gas.
One spherical grain has emitting area . Since isotropic blackbody intensity gives surface flux , its spectral luminosity is
For optically thin grains at distance , the inverse-square law gives
Defining the grain mass absorption coefficient
the optically thin dust-mass estimator is
For a constant source function and no incident background, the radiative transfer equation integrates to
If the cloud subtends solid angle , uniform intensity gives
The physical projected area is . Its grain column density is , so the dust optical depth is
Eliminating gives the finite-optical-depth result
It requires , as demanded by the blackbody brightness limit. When , , so and the result reduces to the optically thin estimator.
The image annotation gives probe electric current and working distance . Interpret as the probe diameter and as its convergence semiangle, in radians. To estimate that angle from the available dimensions, approximate the effective aperture plane as a distance from the specimen. With aperture radius ,
The electron beam brightness measures electric current per probe area per solid angle; the supplied convention corresponds to a circular probe and a paraxial cone of solid angle approximately . The aperture diameter must be halved, and the annotated current is in picoamperes. Treating the full aperture angle as would introduce a factor-of-two error in .
This is a conditional optical estimate: the working distance is not necessarily the actual electron-optical distance from the effective aperture to the focused probe. The answer assumes that approximation, the quoted electron beam brightness at the operating voltage, and negligible optical aberrations. The 30 kV annotation gives a much shorter de Broglie wavelength than 4 nm, so a nanometre-scale probe is plausible. Actual electron microscope resolution also depends on diffraction, scattering in the specimen, signal generation and collection, signal-to-noise ratio, drift and specimen charging. A 4 nm probe does not establish that every measured edge width is 4 nm.
antenna quantities. radiation resistance represents emitted power by at the feed. It is not Joule heating in the antenna; a separate loss resistance accounts for that. antenna gain is the directional far-field intensity relative to an isotropic radiator supplied with the same input power:
It includes radiation efficiency and equals antenna directivity only for a lossless antenna. antenna effective area is defined by the power available to a matched load, , for incidence from a specified direction and matched polarization. It need not equal a literal geometric collecting area.
Gain–area relation. To derive the antenna gain-effective-area relation, take a passive reciprocal antenna. Its electromagnetic reciprocity makes the receive pattern proportional to the transmit pattern; write . The normalization follows from thermal equilibrium. In the Rayleigh-Jeans law limit, blackbody radiation radiance per unit frequency per unit solid angle is for two polarizations. A single antenna polarization couples to one half, so the available incident noise power is
The open-circuit Johnson voltage spectrum of the antenna resistance is . A matched load receives half the open-circuit voltage, giving available power . In a lossless antenna at thermal equilibrium these powers agree; hence . Since ,
The same efficiency factor multiplies receiving area and gain if reciprocal dissipative losses are included consistently. Impedance mismatch or polarization mismatch reduces delivered power further. The factor of two for thermal polarization modes and the factor of four between open-circuit voltage variance and matched-load power are separate effects.
Normalize the radar beam. Interpret the azimuth as signed about the beam centre at , so both sides of the narrow lobe are included. Put . To leading order in the small angular width, and the angular integrals can be extended over the real line:
The Gaussian antenna beam solid angle gives the peak on the positive -axis consequently has
Here is power per solid angle, equal to in the far field. The leading neglected solid-angle correction is relative order .
Return using the supplied electric-dipole response. The electric-dipole radar cross section of a small conducting sphere determines this return. At target range , the incident intensity is . Write its root mean square electric field as , with . The induced electric dipole is . A dipole's angular radiation pattern, normalized by , gives . The backward direction is perpendicular to the induced dipole, so the supplied total dipole power gives
The received intensity is this angular power divided by . Using the monostatic radar equation, or directly multiplying by the receive area, gives
The receiver threshold is a voltage across the matched load, so the detectable power is , without another matching factor:
This is the electric-dipole result following from the response data provided. It assumes , far-field propagation on each leg, alignment at the beam maximum and no attenuation or additional receiver losses.
Perfect-conductor qualification. perfect-conductor sphere dipole interference arises because the sphere also excludes the oscillating magnetic field. Solving the magnetic boundary problem gives in addition to the electric dipole. The magnetic polarizability of a perfectly conducting sphere follows from its induced surface currents.[ref] In the backward direction the magnetic contribution has half the electric scattering amplitude and the same sign, so the returned intensity is of the electric-only value. Equivalently, the monostatic radar cross section is , rather than . Including both leading dipoles therefore gives
Both results have been distinguished because the supplied auxiliary data describe only the electric dipole, while the literal perfect-conductor boundary conditions also generate the magnetic one. The backward interference is a leading-order effect, not a higher-order correction in .[ref]
Figure 1.
Original electric-only and electric-plus-magnetic small-sphere scattering comparison
. Details.
Since , the Poynting vector is
The area on a distant sphere corresponding to solid angle is . Consequently
The average is over the source motion at retarded time. At leading nonrelativistic order, differences between source-time and reception-time averaging are beyond the approximation. The units are power per solid angle, .
The acceleration covariance in nonrelativistic radiation is another way to organize this result: with , the angular factor is . Integrating over all observation directions uses and gives the averaged Larmor formula, .
After field electron emission, let denote the plate separation of the parallel-plate capacitor, which the question does not specify. The uniform capacitor electric field has magnitude , and a nonrelativistic electron of mass has constant acceleration magnitude . The sign of its charge affects the direction of the radiation field but not its radiated power.
In the supplied nonrelativistic Liénard-Wiechert field, . At polar angle to the acceleration, , hence
The outgoing Poynting vector has magnitude . Its radiated power per solid angle is therefore
Using gives the Larmor formula and the requested constant power during the uniform-field part of the flight:
The brackets in the given field require the acceleration at retarded time; the radiation reaches the far observer after the propagation delay. This derivation assumes that radiation reaction is a small correction to the acceleration and that the flight is nonrelativistic, for example for release from rest. Entry, emission and impact transients are not described by the uniform-field model. A result solely in terms of cannot be obtained without a plate spacing or a specified internal field.
Choose a flat wall and let measure the angle from the direction towards it. Particles of speed in solid angle occupy fraction of an isotropic gas. In time , those within normal distance reach the wall. Their number per area per time is therefore .
Only the incoming hemisphere contributes. Integrating gives the one-way collision rate per unit area,
Its units are . This is not : selecting the incoming half of the particles must also account for their mean normal velocity. For effusion through a thin hole whose diameter is much less than the mean free path, the same one-way rate applies because collisions within the opening can be neglected.
The equilibrium photon gas is isotropic, so the energy density per unit solid angle in a narrow angular-frequency interval is . For rays making angle with an outward surface normal, a surface element is crossed in time by rays initially in a volume . Only the outward hemisphere contributes. Thus
The hemispherical restriction supplies a factor and the directional projection supplies another . A small aperture in a cavity therefore emits this spectral power per unit area. A blackbody at the same temperature emits the same amount: otherwise radiation exchange between it and the aperture would violate thermal equilibrium.
Integrating Planck's law over all positive angular frequencies gives the total emitted heat flux density
Set . Then
The remaining integral is independent of temperature, proving . Its value follows by expanding and integrating termwise:
Consequently the Stefan–Boltzmann law is
This is emitted power alone. A body in a radiation environment also absorbs incoming radiation, which must be included when calculating net radiative cooling.
An inverse-square field spreads through area proportional to squared distance. More generally the flux contribution of a point source is proportional to the solid angle subtended by a surface element; the oriented solid angles sum to for an enclosed source and zero for an exterior one. Superposition extends this to a mass distribution.
Newton's law of universal gravitation gives for a point mass. A surrounding sphere therefore has flux , so
For the tunnel, approximate its water as an infinite uniform cylinder with and density . The bob is at radial distance . A coaxial Gaussian surface gives
For the plumb-line deflection from cylindrical gravity, horizontal equilibrium gives . Draining removes the attraction toward the tunnel, so the bob shifts away by
The unchanged rock and ordinary gravitational field cancel in the before/after comparison; end effects and mechanical disturbances are neglected.
For the tidal water loading of a spring balance, approximate the extra water at high tide as an infinite plane slab of thickness , with the suspended mass above it. The gravitational field of an infinite plane sheet, derived with a pillbox Gaussian surface, gives added downward field . With initial spring extension ,
The extension increases at high tide. These estimates use and the stated water-density approximation; salinity, finite estuary geometry and terrestrial tidal deformation alter a real measurement.
redshift. An incoming radial null ray satisfies . Consecutive wave crests follow the same comoving path, so the endpoint changes in the fixed path integral obey . Comoving clocks read cosmic time; hence their measured periods and frequencies satisfy
The physical wavelength stretches with the scale factor during propagation. It is not necessary to assign a unique global inertial-frame recession velocity to a distant source.
Radial coordinate and cosmological look-back time. Differentiating gives . Combining this with the null-ray integral yields
The extra factor in the second denominator records the conversion from scale-factor change to elapsed cosmic time.
proper-motion distance. A small transverse displacement at emission has proper length . Define its source-frame transverse speed as ; cosmological time dilation makes . Therefore
Equivalently, , where the angular diameter distance is . The observer-time versus source-time distinction is essential. This calculation uses the stated transverse speed convention and the homogeneous background, without additional peculiar radial relativistic Doppler effect or gravitational lensing.
redshift shell volume at the present epoch. The induced spatial metric tensor on the present slice gives . Since ,
This is the volume at the present epoch of the comoving shell intersected by the past light cone. Its proper volume at emission is smaller by ; a conserved population's proper number density is larger by the same factor, preserving its count.
Einstein-de Sitter cumulative number counts. In flat geometry . Inserting the stated Hubble parameter into the radial integral gives
The constant present-volume number density makes . With no members of the population before its formation epoch,
As an independent check, substitution evaluates this to
This is exactly the Euclidean comoving volume per unit solid angle in the flat model. It assumes a complete count with the specified fixed population; luminosity selection, mergers or subsequent number-density evolution would require additional factors.
Figure 1.
Original Einstein-de Sitter proper-motion and angular diameter distances, differential counts and cumulative fraction
. Details.
Take and . A full spin one-half rotation gives , an essential sign. The cyclic phase of a spin in a rotating field has factors and total quantum phases
To separate the adiabatic dynamical phase, set and . Then . The instantaneous laboratory energies are , so the adiabatic dynamical phases are . Subtracting them from gives
The oriented solid angle is swept out by the field direction. These are the Berry phases for the eigenstates parallel and antiparallel to that direction. Retaining the spinor sign makes the quantum phase vanish modulo when the field does not trace a nontrivial loop. The assumption suffices for adiabatic following; near degeneracy it must not be silently dropped.[ref]
Figure 1.
Original rotating-field cone and convergence of the exact cyclic phase to the spin-one-half geometric phase
. Details.
Canonical probabilities. A canonical ensemble describes a system of fixed particle number and fixed external parameters such as volume, weakly coupled to a much larger thermal reservoir. They exchange energy and reach thermal equilibrium, while the reservoir's temperature stays effectively constant. The interaction energy is negligible in the state counting. The combined isolated system is described by equal probabilities for its accessible microstates.
If its total energy is , the probability of a particular system microstate is proportional to the reservoir multiplicity at . Writing that multiplicity as , expand its entropy:
The large-reservoir limit suppresses the higher terms. Normalization therefore gives
The sum counts individual microstates; when grouping them by energy, their state degeneracies must be included. This is the canonical partition function.
Classical orientational heat capacity. Hold the magnetic field fixed. Orientations of the magnetic dipole moment have the solid angle measure . With , the angular partition function is
Choosing a normalized angular measure would remove , with no effect on the energy derivatives. Differentiating at fixed ,
The angular average is the Langevin function. Since ,
This is the heat capacity of a classical magnetic dipole, in for one magnetic moment. The word specific here refers to that single moment; independent magnetic moments have times this heat capacity. At the energy is independent of orientation and , obtained by the continuous limit. At fixed nonzero , the classical low-temperature limit instead gives .
Equipartition and its proof. The equipartition theorem states that an independent quadratic term in a classical Hamiltonian, with , contributes to its mean energy. One needs a canonical measure that factors as times the measure of the remaining variables, convergence of the integrals, and vanishing boundary terms. The coordinate must not be restricted by a thermally important hard boundary or a coupled constraint.
For , integration by parts gives
Integrate over all other variables and divide by . It follows that
The same reasoning applies to quadratic momenta among the canonical variables. It is the number of quadratic energy contributions that is counted, not an unrestricted count of coordinate labels.
Two soft orientational directions. When , the moment is concentrated near alignment. Introduce local Cartesian coordinates in the tangent plane and . To leading order,
The two quadratic terms each contribute , so
This agrees with the exact angular calculation. Treating alone as one Cartesian quadratic variable would miss the measure and the second tangent direction. There are no extra rotational kinetic terms in the stipulated Hamiltonian; adding such terms would be a different model.
Quantum spin one. The spin projections are , with . Put , where is the gyromagnetic ratio. The three energies are , irrespective of the sign of . Relative to the ground state they are . Thus, with ,
Differentiation, or the canonical energy fluctuation identity , gives
In the requested limit,
This spin-1 paramagnet has a nondegenerate ground state and a finite spectral gap. Excitations are exponentially rare, so its heat capacity tends to zero. Classical orientational equipartition assumed a continuum of arbitrarily small excitation energies; that assumption fails when . This is a change in the accessible state spectrum, not a violation of the equipartition theorem within its classical domain.
Photometry (optics) 2026-10-13
Photometry weights visible electromagnetic radiation by standardized visual response functions; radiometry measures its energy and power without visual weighting.[ref]
The question is how much light a source supplies under a stated visual weighting. A beam containing at the defining frequency has luminous flux . Moving the same radiant flux to a region of smaller spectral luminous efficacy reduces its luminous flux. Changing the optical spectrum changes this conversion even when its total power stays fixed. This makes photometry useful for comparing lighting, while radiometry remains necessary for an energy budget. The lumen counts luminous flux; the candela additionally specifies its distribution over solid angle.
Two measurement routes implement the weighting: measure an optical spectrum and evaluate a weighted integral, or use a photometer whose spectral responsivity approximates the prescribed weighting. Both require a specified collection geometry. Neither is a complete prediction of an individual's perception of a scene.[ref]
Photon gas 2026-10-13
A photon gas is a collection of photons described statistically as radiation. Here the equilibrium model is homogeneous, isotropic electromagnetic radiation in vacuum at temperature : each photon has energy , with momentum and frequency , and there are two independent transverse states of electromagnetic polarization. An absorbing cavity with walls at a common temperature provides a way to establish this thermal equilibrium. The bulk formulas assume cavity dimensions much larger than the typical wavelength , so the electromagnetic mode density in a box can replace individual cavity modes by a continuum. [ref]
The crucial constraint is whether photon emission and photon absorption, or other number-changing processes, can equilibrate the photon population. When they can, photon number is not an independently conserved quantity and the equilibrium photon chemical potential is . For each polarization and frequency, the mean occupation number then follows the Bose-Einstein distribution:
If number-changing processes are ineffective but number-conserving interactions redistribute energy, a constrained Bose-Einstein distribution can instead have with chemical potential fixed by the number constraint. Thus thermal equilibrium with respect to energy exchange alone does not establish . The zero value can also persist in an already prepared Planck photon distribution during suitable subsequent evolution; continual photon emission is not required to preserve it. [ref]
Combining with the two-polarization density of states, , gives the Planck photon distribution and the spectral photon energy density:
Here is the spectral radiance in Planck's law; is stored energy density per unit frequency, not outgoing power per area. Their different units are connected by the full-sphere solid angle and the speed of light . The Boltzmann constant is , and is the Planck constant. [ref]
The equilibrium equation of state is particularly simple:
The radiation constant is the same constant called in black-body radiation; is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant. An outline of the energy density calculation substitutes and uses . The radiation pressure follows because the angular average of the squared directional component of photon momentum is for isotropy; the thermodynamic derivation of blackbody radiation pressure supplies an independent route. These formulas describe the radiation contribution, not the cavity walls. The isotropic massless relation survives a different isotropic spectrum, whereas the coefficient in requires the zero-chemical potential Planck photon distribution.
For a computed example with stipulated , the photon energy density is and the radiation pressure is . The photon number density in the International System of Units is
Here is the Riemann zeta function. The mean photon energy differs from the energy at the peak of a spectral curve: counting photons and weighting them by energy emphasize different frequencies. The calculations use the exact International System of Units values of the Planck constant, Boltzmann constant and speed of light. [ref]
Figure 1.
Analytic photon gas spectra: counting photons and weighting their energies
. Original equilibrium model, not measured data. The left panel evaluates at stipulated per gigahertz. The right panel uses and plots the normalized spectral fractions and , each with total integral one on . Their different shapes show why a photon-counting spectrum and an energy density spectrum have different peaks. Details.
A motivating observation is the cosmic microwave background spectrum measured by the Far Infrared Absolute Spectrophotometer (FIRAS) aboard COBE. Its apparatus used a polarizing Michelson interferometer, with one input viewing a roughly seven-degree sky patch and the other an internal blackbody. Scanning mirrors changed the optical path length difference; heat-sensitive detectors recorded the varying power, and Fourier transform spectroscopy recovered the spectral difference. Operation outside the terrestrial atmosphere removed atmospheric emission and absorption, while shielding and cooling the optics in a helium cryostat suppressed the instrument's own radiation. [ref]
Absolute calibration came from moving an external blackbody into the sky aperture, filling the same beam used for the sky. This was an iron-loaded epoxy absorber shaped as a re-entrant cone. Repeated reflections made it a close approximation to a blackbody, while thermometers supplied its temperature. Mather and colleagues explicitly evaluated reflections, temperature gradients, radiation leaking through the material and leakage around its edge. These are limits on how faithfully the calibrator realizes thermal equilibrium radiation, rather than details that can be eliminated merely by calling it black. [ref]
During sky observations the internal blackbody temperature was adjusted to nearly null the spectral difference, reducing gain and drift errors. Fixsen and colleagues' 1996 analysis used calibrated spectra over wavenumbers to , about to . They separated the sky's spatially uniform component, its dipole and Galactic emission, and varied sky cuts and foreground templates as controls. The resulting cosmic microwave background spectrum agreed with a single Planck function, with reported RMS deviations below 50 parts per million of its peak brightness. This is a residual statistic over the analyzed spectrum, not a pointwise relative error bound at every frequency. [ref]
The observation motivates using a photon gas as a physical model rather than merely a formal counting exercise. Its interpretation has a clear boundary: agreement with Planck's law constrains departures from an equilibrium spectral shape within the calibrated band and foreground assumptions; it does not directly measure radiation pressure or entropy density of a photon gas. Nor does it establish that today's cosmic microwave background is continually re-equilibrating with matter. A previously thermal spectrum can retain its Planck function shape as expansion of the universe lowers every photon frequency in the same proportion. The usefulness of the model is that one measured spectral temperature, together with its equilibrium assumptions, predicts energy density, radiation pressure, photon number density and entropy density of a photon gas consistently.
Planck's law 2026-10-13
Planck's law gives the spectral radiance of an ideal blackbody in thermal equilibrium at absolute temperature . It predicts how much power is carried in each small frequency or wavelength interval, per projected area and per solid angle. The whole curve is determined by : no material-specific parameter enters this ideal Planck function.
Writing for frequency in hertz and for wavelength in metres, the two forms of the Planck function are
Here is the Planck constant, the Boltzmann constant, and the speed of light in vacuum. Their exact values in the International System of Units are , , and . [ref]
The units matter: is measured in , whereas is measured in . Both are spectral radiance, rather than radiant exitance or energy density. To report per micrometre, multiply its per-metre value by ; a micrometre-wide interval is metres wide.
For a computed example, at and , the exponent is . Substitution into Planck's law gives , or per micrometre. At the same wavelength, the illustrative temperatures and give and in the latter units. These are ideal predictions for stipulated temperatures.
Figure 1. . The vertical axis is spectral radiance per micrometre, including the conversion from per metre. Increasing temperature raises the curve at every fixed wavelength and moves its marked peak toward shorter wavelengths. The peaks are approximately , , and for , , and , respectively; only to of each spectrum is shown. Details.
The key change of variables is . Corresponding positive intervals carry the same power, so and
Equal-width wavelength intervals have unequal widths in frequency; the factor compensates for this. Merely replacing the horizontal-axis labels of by does not produce . This explains the frequency and wavelength peaks of Planck's law.
A short derivation uses the Boltzmann distribution for a single electromagnetic mode with thermal energies , . Put . The geometric series gives and mean thermal energy . The electromagnetic mode density in a box, including both independent polarization of an electromagnetic wave states of a photon, is per volume per unit frequency. Multiplication gives spectral energy density ; isotropy gives . This counts thermal excitation energy, excluding zero-point energy. [ref]
Planck's law connects quantum mechanics to a measurable radiation curve. Its small- limit is the Rayleigh-Jeans law, ; its large- limit is the Wien approximation, . The suppression at high frequency makes the total energy density finite. Integrating the curve gives the Stefan–Boltzmann law, while locating its peak gives Wien's displacement law. Thus one formula predicts both the spectral shape and the total emission.