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The Stark effect is the shifting and splitting of spectral lines of atoms and molecules due to the presence of an external electric field. It is the electric-field analogue of the Zeeman effect, where a spectral line is split into several components due to the presence of the magnetic field. Although initially coined for the static case, it is also used in the wider context to describe the effect of time-dependent electric fields. In particular, the Stark effect is responsible for the pressure broadening (Stark broadening) of spectral lines by charged particles in plasmas. For most spectral lines, the Stark effect is either linear (proportional to the applied electric field) or quadratic with a high accuracy. The Stark effect can be observed both for emission and absorption lines. The latter is sometimes called the inverse Stark effect, but this term is no longer used in the modern literature. History The effect is named after the German physicist Johannes Stark, who discovered it in 1913. It was independently discovered in the same year by the Italian physicist Antonino Lo Surdo, and in Italy it is thus sometimes called the Stark–Lo Surdo effect. The discovery of this effect contributed importantly to the development of quantum theory and Stark was awarded with the Nobel Prize in Physics in the year 1919. Inspired by the magnetic Zeeman effect, and especially by Hendrik Lorentz's explanation of it, Woldemar Voigt performed classical mechanical calculations of quasi-elastically bound electrons in an electric field. By using experimental indices of refraction he gave an estimate of the Stark splittings. This estimate was a few orders of magnitude too low. Not deterred by this prediction, Stark undertook measurements on excited states of the hydrogen atom and succeeded in observing splittings. By the use of the Bohr–Sommerfeld ("old") quantum theory, Paul Epstein and Karl Schwarzschild were independently able to derive equations for the linear and quadratic Stark effect in hydrogen. Four years later, Hendrik Kramers derived formulas for intensities of spectral transitions. Kramers also included the effect of fine structure, with corrections for relativistic kinetic energy and coupling between electron spin and orbital motion. The first quantum mechanical treatment (in the framework of Werner Heisenberg's matrix mechanics) was by Wolfgang Pauli. Erwin Schrödinger discussed at length the Stark effect in his third paper on quantum theory (in which he introduced his perturbation theory), once in the manner of the 1916 work of Epstein (but generalized from the old to the new quantum theory) and once by his (first-order) perturbation approach. Finally, Epstein reconsidered the linear and quadratic Stark effect from the point of view of the new quantum theory. He derived equations for the line intensities which were a decided improvement over Kramers's results obtained by the old quantum theory. While the first-order-perturbation (linear) Stark effect in hydrogen is in agreement with both the old Bohr–Sommerfeld model and the quantum-mechanical theory of the atom, higher-order corrections are not. Measurements of the Stark effect under high field strengths confirmed the correctness of the new quantum theory. Mechanism Overview An electric field pointing from left to right, for example, tends to pull nuclei to the right and electrons to the left. In another way of viewing it, if an electronic state has its electron disproportionately to the left, its energy is lowered, while if it has the electron disproportionately to the right, its energy is raised. Other things being equal, the effect of the electric field is greater for outer electron shells, because the electron is more distant from the nucleus, so it travels farther left and farther right. The Stark effect can lead to splitting of degenerate energy levels. For example, in the Bohr model, an electron has the same energy whether it is in the 2s state or any of the 2p states. However, in an electric field, there will be hybrid orbitals (also called quantum superpositions) of the 2s and 2p states where the electron tends to be to the left, which will acquire a lower energy, and other hybrid orbitals where the electron tends to be to the right, which will acquire a higher energy. Therefore, the formerly degenerate energy levels will split into slightly lower and slightly higher energy levels. Multipole expansion The Stark effect originates from the interaction between a charge distribution (atom or molecule) and an external electric field. The interaction energy of a continuous charge distribution ρ ( r ) {\displaystyle \rho (\mathbf {r} )} , confined within a finite volume V {\displaystyle {\mathcal {V}}} , with an external electrostatic potential ϕ ( r ) {\displaystyle \phi (\mathbf {r} )} is This expression is valid classically and quantum-mechanically alike. If the potential varies weakly over the charge distribution, the multipole expansion converges fast, so only a few first terms give an accurate approximation. Namely, keeping only the zero- and first-order terms, where we introduced the electric field F i ≡ − ( ∂ ϕ ∂ r i ) | 0 {\textstyle F_{i}\equiv -\left.\left({\frac {\partial \phi }{\partial r_{i}}}\right)\right|_{\mathbf {0} }} and assumed the origin 0 to be somewhere within V {\displaystyle {\mathcal {V}}} . Therefore, the interaction becomes where q {\displaystyle q} and μ {\displaystyle \mathbf {\mu } } are, respectively, the total charge (zero moment) and the dipole moment of the charge distribution. Classical macroscopic objects are usually neutral or quasi-neutral ( q = 0 {\displaystyle q=0} ), so the first, monopole, term in the expression above is identically zero. This is also the case for a neutral atom or molecule. However, for an ion this is no longer true. Nevertheles.... Discover the J Stark popular books. Find the top 100 most popular J Stark books.