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The term "azimuthal quantum number" was introduced by Arnold Sommerfeld in 1915 [1]: II:132 as part of an ad hoc description of the energy structure of atomic spectra. . Only later with the quantum model of the atom was it understood that this number, ℓ, arises from quantization of orbital angular moment
In chemistry, this quantum number is very important, since it specifies the shape of an atomic orbital and strongly influences chemical bonds and bond angles. The azimuthal quantum number can also denote the number of angular nodes present in an orbital. For example, for p orbitals, ℓ = 1 and thus the amount of angular nodes in a p orbital is 1.
In atomic physics, a term symbol is an abbreviated description of the total spin and orbital angular momentum quantum numbers of the electrons in a multi-electron atom.So while the word symbol suggests otherwise, it represents an actual value of a physical quantity.
The spin magnetic quantum number m s specifies the z-axis component of the spin angular momentum for a particle having spin quantum number s. For an electron, s is 1 ⁄ 2 , and m s is either + 1 ⁄ 2 or − 1 ⁄ 2 , often called "spin-up" and "spin-down", or α and β.
Each orbital in an atom is characterized by a set of values of three quantum numbers n, ℓ, and m ℓ, which respectively correspond to electron's energy, its orbital angular momentum, and its orbital angular momentum projected along a chosen axis (magnetic quantum number). The orbitals with a well-defined magnetic quantum number are generally ...
This notation is used to specify electron configurations and to create the term symbol for the electron states in a multi-electron atom. When writing a term symbol, the above scheme for a single electron's orbital quantum number is applied to the total orbital angular momentum associated to an electron state. [4]
Here L is the total orbital angular momentum quantum number. [18] For atoms with a well-defined S, the multiplicity of a state is defined as 2 S + 1. This is equal to the number of different possible values of the total (orbital plus spin) angular momentum J for a given (L, S) combination, provided that S ≤ L (the typical case).
Therefore, the term with lowest energy is also the term with maximum and maximum number of unpaired electrons with equal spin angular momentum (either +1/2 or -1/2). For a given multiplicity, the term with the largest value of the total orbital angular momentum quantum number has the lowest energy.