Wavenumber

The term wave number used in the physics literature for different physical parameters in relation to the wavelength or frequency.

Spectroscopy

Spectroscopy in the wave number denotes the reciprocal of the wavelength:

Where c is the vacuum light velocity and frequency.

The wave number is thus the ratio of the number n of the attributable to the length l wavelengths.

Clearly it is the number of vibrations that it performs in a unit length ( in the circular wave number in a length of ).

Your SI unit is m-1, but it is the mainly indicated in spectroscopy CGS unit cm -1, that is, the number of oscillations of a wave per centimeter. This unit is also called Kayser, after Heinrich Kayser. For example, there are rotational spectra in the range 1-100 cm -1, while the vibrational spectra are in the range of 100-10,000 cm -1. In the language of the unit cm -1 is usually called the wave number, so instead of " the gang is 120 inverse centimeters " is said " the gang is located at 120 wave numbers ."

There is about 1 cm light 1/30.000.000.000 second between frequency and wavenumber is a proportionality factor of 30 billion (1 cm -1 is equal to 30 GHz)

The wave vector - circle wave number

The circular wave number k, the magnitude of the wave vector is often referred to as wave number, so that it can easily lead to misunderstandings.

The circular wave number is calculated for the simplified case () to

Similar to the difference between angular frequency and frequency or you should also linguistically clearly delimit the circle wave number of the wave number.