Siegbahn notation

<h2 id="history">History</h2>
<p>The use of the letters K and L to denote X-rays originates in a 1911 paper by <a href="/facts/Charles_Glover_Barkla/tU7ypwWt">Charles Glover Barkla</a>, titled <i>The Spectra of the Fluorescent Röntgen Radiations</i><a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:1" href="#fn:1"><sup>1</sup></a> ("Röntgen radiation" is an <a href="/facts/X-ray/wseP79cN">archaic name for "X-rays"</a>). By 1913, <a href="/facts/Henry_Moseley/W6Kd359o">Henry Moseley</a> had clearly differentiated two types of X-ray lines for each element, naming them α and β.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:2" href="#fn:2"><sup>2</sup></a> In 1914, as part of his thesis, Ivar Malmer (sv:Ivar Malmer), a student of <a href="/facts/Manne_Siegbahn/n4QCgFAG">Manne Siegbahn</a>, discovered that the α and β lines were not single lines, but doublets. In 1916, Siegbahn published this result in the journal <a href="/facts/Nature_(journal)/XmlJXkFx">Nature</a>, using what would come to be known as the Siegbahn notation.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:3" href="#fn:3"><sup>3</sup></a>
</p>
<h2 id="correspondence-between-the-siegbahn-and-iupac-notations">Correspondence between the Siegbahn and IUPAC notations</h2>
<p>The table below shows a few transitions and their initial and final levels.
</p>
<table><tbody><tr><th>Initial level</th><th>Final level</th><th>Siegbahn notation</th><th><a href="/facts/X-ray_notation/Ld0HzeU6">IUPAC notation</a></th></tr><tr><td rowspan="4">K (1s1/2−1)</td><td>L3 (2p3/2−1)</td><td>Kα1</td><td>K–L3</td></tr><tr><td>L2 (2p1/2−1)</td><td>Kα2</td><td>K–L2</td></tr><tr><td>M3 (3p3/2−1)</td><td>Kβ1</td><td>K–M3</td></tr><tr><td>M2 (3p1/2−1)</td><td>Kβ3</td><td>K–M2</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="2">L3 (2p3/2−1)</td><td>M5 (3d5/2−1)</td><td>Lα1</td><td>L3–M5</td></tr><tr><td>M4 (3d3/2−1)</td><td>Lα2</td><td>L3–M4</td></tr><tr><td>L2 (2p1/2−1)</td><td>M4 (3d3/2−1)</td><td>Lβ1</td><td>L2–M4</td></tr><tr><td>M5 (3d5/2−1)</td><td>N7 (4f7/2−1)</td><td>Mα1</td><td>M5–N7</td></tr></tbody></table>
<h2 id="see-also">See also</h2>
<ul><li><a href="/facts/Characteristic_X-ray/Qw75UEha">Characteristic X-ray</a></li>
<li><a href="/facts/Moseley%27s_law/1PjQQ10l">Moseley's law</a></li>
<li><a href="/facts/X-ray_notation/Ld0HzeU6">X-ray notation</a></li></ul>

<ul><li><a href="http://old.iupac.org/reports/V/spectro/partVIII.pdf">Nomenclature system for X-ray spectroscopy</a> (1991) <a href="/facts/International_Union_of_Pure_and_Applied_Chemistry/2AV6myCK">IUPAC</a>.</li></ul>

<h2 id="references">References</h2>

<ol>
<li id="fn:1"><p>Barkla, Charles G (1911). "The Spectra of the Fluorescent Röntgen Radiations". The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science. 22 (129): 396–412. doi:10.1080/14786440908637137. <a href="https://zenodo.org/record/1430862" target="_blank">https://zenodo.org/record/1430862</a> <a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li>
<li id="fn:2"><p>Henry Moseley (1913). "The high-frequency spectra of the elements". The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science. 26 (156): 1024–1034. doi:10.1080/14786441308635052. <a href="https://zenodo.org/record/1430926" target="_blank">https://zenodo.org/record/1430926</a> <a href="#fnref:2" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li>
<li id="fn:3"><p>MANNE SIEGBAHN (17 Feb 1916). "Relations between the K and L Series of the High-Frequency Spectra". Nature. 96 (2416): 676. Bibcode:1916Natur..96R.676S. doi:10.1038/096676b0. S2CID 36078913. <a href="https://zenodo.org/record/2381409" target="_blank">https://zenodo.org/record/2381409</a> <a href="#fnref:3" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li>
</ol>

Siegbahn notation open-in-new

Siegbahn notation