Electronvolt - Wikipedia
Electronvolt - Wikipedia
Electronvolt - Wikipedia
Electronvolt
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Main page "meV", "keV", "MeV", "GeV", "TeV" and "PeV" redirect here. For other uses, see MEV, KEV, GEV, TEV and
Contents PEV.
Current events
In physics, an electronvolt (symbol eV, also written electron-volt and electron volt) is the measure of an
Random article
About Wikipedia amount of kinetic energy gained by a single electron accelerating from rest through an electric potential
Contact us difference of one volt in vacuum. When used as a unit of energy, the numerical value of 1 eV in joules (symbol J)
Donate is equivalent to the numerical value of the charge of an electron in coulombs (symbol C). Under the 2019
redefinition of the SI base units, this sets 1 eV equal to the exact value 1.602 176 634 × 10−19 J.[1]
Contribute
Historically, the electronvolt was devised as a standard unit of measure through its usefulness in electrostatic
Help
particle accelerator sciences, because a particle with electric charge q has an energy E = qV after passing
Learn to edit
Community portal through the potential V; if q is quoted in integer units of the elementary charge and the potential in volts, one gets
Recent changes an energy in eV.
Upload file It is a common unit of energy within physics, widely used in solid state, atomic, nuclear, and particle physics. It is
Tools commonly used with the metric prefixes milli-, kilo-, mega-, giga-, tera-, peta- or exa- (meV, keV, MeV, GeV, TeV,
PeV and EeV respectively). In some older documents, and in the name Bevatron, the symbol BeV is used, which
What links here
stands for billion (109) electronvolts; it is equivalent to the GeV.
Related changes
Special pages Measurement Unit SI value of unit
Contents [hide]
Permanent link
Page information
1 Definition Energy eV 1.602 176 634 × 10−19 J
2 Mass
Cite this page Mass eV/c2 1.782 662 × 10−36 kg
Wikidata item 3 Momentum
Momentum eV/c 5.344 286 × 10−28 kg·m/s
4 Distance
Print/export Temperature eV/kB 1.160 451 812 × 104 K
5 Temperature
Download as PDF
6 Properties Time ħ/eV 6.582 119 × 10−16 s
Printable version
7 Scattering experiments
Distance ħc/eV 1.973 27 × 10−7 m
Languages 8 Energy comparisons
العربية 8.1 Per mole
Čeština 9 See also
Español 10 References
िहन्दी 11 External links
Bahasa Indonesia
Bahasa Melayu
Русский Definition [ edit ]
!"#$ An electronvolt is the amount of kinetic energy gained or lost by a single electron accelerating from rest through
an electric potential difference of one volt in vacuum. Hence, it has a value of one volt, 1 J/C, multiplied by the
71 more electron's elementary charge e, 1.602 176 634 × 10−19 C.[2] Therefore, one electronvolt is equal to
1.602 176 634 × 10−19 J.[3]
Edit links
The electronvolt, as opposed to the volt, is not an SI unit. The electronvolt (eV) is a unit of energy whereas the
volt (V) is the derived SI unit of electric potential. The SI unit for energy is the joule (J).
Mass [ edit ]
By mass–energy equivalence, the electronvolt is also a unit of mass. It is common in particle physics, where
units of mass and energy are often interchanged, to express mass in units of eV/c2, where c is the speed of light
in vacuum (from E = mc2). It is common to simply express mass in terms of "eV" as a unit of mass, effectively
using a system of natural units with c set to 1.[4] The mass equivalent of 1 eV/c2 is
For example, an electron and a positron, each with a mass of 0.511 MeV/c2, can annihilate to yield 1.022 MeV of
energy. The proton has a mass of 0.938 GeV/c2. In general, the masses of all hadrons are of the order of
1 GeV/c2, which makes the GeV (gigaelectronvolt) a convenient unit of mass for particle physics:
The unified atomic mass unit (u), almost exactly 1 gram divided by the Avogadro number, is almost the mass of
a hydrogen atom, which is mostly the mass of the proton. To convert to electron volts, use the formula:
Momentum [ edit ]
In high-energy physics, the electronvolt is often used as a unit of momentum. A potential difference of 1 volt
causes an electron to gain an amount of energy (i.e., 1 eV). This gives rise to usage of eV (and keV, MeV, GeV
or TeV) as units of momentum, for the energy supplied results in acceleration of the particle.
The dimensions of momentum units are T−1LM. The dimensions of energy units are T−2L2M. Then, dividing the
units of energy (such as eV) by a fundamental constant that has units of velocity (T−1L), facilitates the required
conversion of using energy units to describe momentum. In the field of high-energy particle physics, the
fundamental velocity unit is the speed of light in vacuum c.
By dividing energy in eV by the speed of light, one can describe the momentum of an electron in units of eV/c.[5]
[6]
The fundamental velocity constant c is often dropped from the units of momentum by way of defining units of
length such that the value of c is unity. For example, if the momentum p of an electron is said to be 1 GeV, then
the conversion to MKS can be achieved by:
Distance [ edit ]
In particle physics, a system of "natural units" in which the speed of light in vacuum c and the reduced Planck
constant ħ are dimensionless and equal to unity is widely used: c = ħ = 1. In these units, both distances and
times are expressed in inverse energy units (while energy and mass are expressed in the same units, see
mass–energy equivalence). In particular, particle scattering lengths are often presented in units of inverse
particle masses.
Outside this system of units, the conversion factors between electronvolt, second, and nanometer are the
following:
The above relations also allow expressing the mean lifetime τ of an unstable particle (in seconds) in terms of its
decay width Γ (in eV) via Γ = ħ/τ. For example, the B0 meson has a lifetime of 1.530(9) picoseconds, mean
decay length is cτ = 459.7 μm, or a decay width of (4.302 ± 25) × 10−4 eV.
Conversely, the tiny meson mass differences responsible for meson oscillations are often expressed in the more
convenient inverse picoseconds.
Energy in electronvolts is sometimes expressed through the wavelength of light with photons of the same
energy:
Temperature [ edit ]
In certain fields, such as plasma physics, it is convenient to use the electronvolt to express temperature. The
electronvolt is divided by the Boltzmann constant to convert to the Kelvin scale:
The kB is assumed when using the electronvolt to express temperature, for example, a typical magnetic
confinement fusion plasma is 15 keV (kilo-electronvolts), which is equal to 170 MK (million Kelvin).
290 K
As an approximation: kBT is about 0.025 eV (≈ 11604 K/eV ) at a temperature of 20 °C.
Properties [ edit ]
where h is the Planck constant, c is the speed of light. This reduces to[1]
In a low-energy nuclear scattering experiment, it is conventional to refer to the nuclear recoil energy in units of
eVr, keVr, etc. This distinguishes the nuclear recoil energy from the "electron equivalent" recoil energy (eVee,
keVee, etc.) measured by scintillation light. For example, the yield of a phototube is measured in phe/keVee
(photoelectrons per keV electron-equivalent energy). The relationship between eV, eVr, and eVee depends on
the medium the scattering takes place in, and must be established empirically for each material.
Energy Source
10 YeV
approximate grand unification energy
(1 × 1025 eV)
1 MeV
about twice the rest energy of an electron
(1.602 × 10−13 J)
References [ edit ]
1. ^ a b "CODATA Value: Planck constant in eV s" . Archived from the original on 22 January 2015. Retrieved 30 March 2015.
2. ^ "2018 CODATA Value: elementary charge" . The NIST Reference on Constants, Units, and Uncertainty. NIST. 20 May
2019. Retrieved 2019-05-20.
3. ^ "2018 CODATA Value: electron volt" . The NIST Reference on Constants, Units, and Uncertainty. NIST. 20 May 2019.
Retrieved 2019-05-20.
4. ^ Barrow, J. D. "Natural Units Before Planck." Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society 24 (1983): 24.
5. ^ "Units in particle physics" . Associate Teacher Institute Toolkit. Fermilab. 22 March 2002. Archived from the original on
14 May 2011. Retrieved 13 February 2011.
6. ^ "Special Relativity" . Virtual Visitor Center. SLAC. 15 June 2009. Retrieved 13 February 2011.
7. ^ What is Light? Archived December 5, 2013, at the Wayback Machine – UC Davis lecture slides
8. ^ Elert, Glenn. "Electromagnetic Spectrum, The Physics Hypertextbook" . hypertextbook.com. Archived from the original on
2016-07-29. Retrieved 2016-07-30.
9. ^ "Definition of frequency bands on" . Vlf.it. Archived from the original on 2010-04-30. Retrieved 2010-10-16.
10. ^ Open Questions in Physics. Archived 2014-08-08 at the Wayback Machine German Electron-Synchrotron. A Research
Centre of the Helmholtz Association. Updated March 2006 by JCB. Original by John Baez.
11. ^ "A growing astrophysical neutrino signal in IceCube now features a 2-PeV neutrino" . Archived from the original on 2015-
03-19.
12. ^ Glossary Archived 2014-09-15 at the Wayback Machine - CMS Collaboration, CERN
13. ^ ATLAS; CMS (26 March 2015). "Combined Measurement of the Higgs Boson Mass in pp Collisions at √s=7 and 8 TeV with the
ATLAS and CMS Experiments" . Physical Review Letters. 114 (19): 191803. arXiv:1503.07589 .
Bibcode:2015PhRvL.114s1803A . doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.191803 . PMID 26024162 .
14. ^ Mertens, Susanne (2016). "Direct neutrino mass experiments". Journal of Physics: Conference Series. 718 (2): 022013.
arXiv:1605.01579 . Bibcode:2016JPhCS.718b2013M . doi:10.1088/1742-6596/718/2/022013 . S2CID 56355240 .
V ·T ·E SI units [hide]
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you
agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit
organization.
Privacy policy About Wikipedia Disclaimers Contact Wikipedia Mobile view Developers Statistics Cookie statement