The transmission coefficient is used in physics and electrical engineering when wave propagation in a medium containing discontinuities is considered. A transmission coefficient describes the amplitude, intensity, or total power of a transmitted wave relative to an incident wave.
Different fields of application have different definitions for the term. All the meanings are very similar in concept: In chemistry, the transmission coefficient refers to a chemical reaction overcoming a potential barrier; in optics and telecommunications it is the amplitude of a wave transmitted through a medium or conductor to that of the incident wave; in quantum mechanics it is used to describe the behavior of waves incident on a barrier, in a way similar to optics and telecommunications.
Although conceptually the same, the details in each field differ, and in some cases the terms are not an exact analogy.
In chemistry, in particular in transition state theory, there appears a certain "transmission coefficient" for overcoming a potential barrier. It is (often) taken to be unity for monomolecular reactions. It appears in the Eyring equation.
In optics, transmission is the property of a substance to permit the passage of light, with some or none of the incident light being absorbed in the process. If some light is absorbed by the substance, then the transmitted light will be a combination of the wavelengths of the light that was transmitted and not absorbed. For example, a blue light filter appears blue because it absorbs red and green wavelengths. If white light is shone through the filter, the light transmitted also appears blue because of the absorption of the red and green wavelengths.
The transmission coefficient is a measure of how much of an electromagnetic wave (light) passes through a surface or an optical element. Transmission coefficients can be calculated for either the amplitude or the intensity of the wave. Either is calculated by taking the ratio of the value after the surface or element to the value before. The transmission coefficient for total power is generally the same as the coefficient for intensity.
In telecommunication, the transmission coefficient is the ratio of the amplitude of the complex transmitted wave to that of the incident wave at a discontinuity in the transmission line. [1]
Consider a wave travelling through a transmission line with a step in impedance from to . When the wave transitions through the impedance step, a portion of the wave will be reflected back to the source. Because the voltage on a transmission line is always the sum of the forward and reflected waves at that point, if the incident wave amplitude is 1, and the reflected wave is , then the amplitude of the forward wave must be sum of the two waves or .
The value for is uniquely determined from first principles by noting that the incident power on the discontinuity must equal the sum of the power in the reflected and transmitted waves:
Solving the quadratic for leads both to the reflection coefficient :
and to the transmission coefficient:
The probability that a portion of a communications system, such as a line, circuit, channel or trunk, will meet specified performance criteria is also sometimes called the "transmission coefficient" of that portion of the system. [1] The value of the transmission coefficient is inversely related to the quality of the line, circuit, channel or trunk.
In non-relativistic quantum mechanics, the transmission coefficient and related reflection coefficient are used to describe the behavior of waves incident on a barrier. [2] The transmission coefficient represents the probability flux of the transmitted wave relative to that of the incident wave. This coefficient is often used to describe the probability of a particle tunneling through a barrier.
The transmission coefficient is defined in terms of the incident and transmitted probability current density J according to:
where is the probability current in the wave incident upon the barrier with normal unit vector and is the probability current in the wave moving away from the barrier on the other side.
The reflection coefficient R is defined analogously:
Law of total probability requires that , which in one dimension reduces to the fact that the sum of the transmitted and reflected currents is equal in magnitude to the incident current.
For sample calculations, see rectangular potential barrier .
Using the WKB approximation, one can obtain a tunnelling coefficient that looks like
where are the two classical turning points for the potential barrier. [2] [ failed verification ] In the classical limit of all other physical parameters much larger than the reduced Planck constant, denoted , the transmission coefficient goes to zero. This classical limit would have failed in the situation of a square potential.
If the transmission coefficient is much less than 1, it can be approximated with the following formula:
where is the length of the barrier potential.
In mathematical physics and mathematics, the Pauli matrices are a set of three 2 × 2 complex matrices that are traceless, Hermitian, involutory and unitary. Usually indicated by the Greek letter sigma, they are occasionally denoted by tau when used in connection with isospin symmetries.
A scanning tunneling microscope (STM) is a type of scanning probe microscope used for imaging surfaces at the atomic level. Its development in 1981 earned its inventors, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, then at IBM Zürich, the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986. STM senses the surface by using an extremely sharp conducting tip that can distinguish features smaller than 0.1 nm with a 0.01 nm (10 pm) depth resolution. This means that individual atoms can routinely be imaged and manipulated. Most scanning tunneling microscopes are built for use in ultra-high vacuum at temperatures approaching absolute zero, but variants exist for studies in air, water and other environments, and for temperatures over 1000 °C.
In particle physics, the Dirac equation is a relativistic wave equation derived by British physicist Paul Dirac in 1928. In its free form, or including electromagnetic interactions, it describes all spin-1/2 massive particles, called "Dirac particles", such as electrons and quarks for which parity is a symmetry. It is consistent with both the principles of quantum mechanics and the theory of special relativity, and was the first theory to account fully for special relativity in the context of quantum mechanics. It was validated by accounting for the fine structure of the hydrogen spectrum in a completely rigorous way. It has become vital in the building of the Standard Model.
The propagation constant of a sinusoidal electromagnetic wave is a measure of the change undergone by the amplitude and phase of the wave as it propagates in a given direction. The quantity being measured can be the voltage, the current in a circuit, or a field vector such as electric field strength or flux density. The propagation constant itself measures the dimensionless change in magnitude or phase per unit length. In the context of two-port networks and their cascades, propagation constant measures the change undergone by the source quantity as it propagates from one port to the next.
In mathematics, the beta function, also called the Euler integral of the first kind, is a special function that is closely related to the gamma function and to binomial coefficients. It is defined by the integral
In quantum mechanics, a spherically symmetric potential is a system of which the potential only depends on the radial distance from the spherical center and a location in space. A particle in a spherically symmetric potential will behave accordingly to said potential and can therefore be used as an approximation, for example, of the electron in a hydrogen atom or of the formation of chemical bonds.
In physics, the Rabi cycle is the cyclic behaviour of a two-level quantum system in the presence of an oscillatory driving field. A great variety of physical processes belonging to the areas of quantum computing, condensed matter, atomic and molecular physics, and nuclear and particle physics can be conveniently studied in terms of two-level quantum mechanical systems, and exhibit Rabi flopping when coupled to an optical driving field. The effect is important in quantum optics, magnetic resonance and quantum computing, and is named after Isidor Isaac Rabi.
In physics, the S-matrix or scattering matrix relates the initial state and the final state of a physical system undergoing a scattering process. It is used in quantum mechanics, scattering theory and quantum field theory (QFT).
In physics, a wave vector is a vector used in describing a wave, with a typical unit being cycle per metre. It has a magnitude and direction. Its magnitude is the wavenumber of the wave, and its direction is perpendicular to the wavefront. In isotropic media, this is also the direction of wave propagation.
In quantum mechanics and quantum field theory, the propagator is a function that specifies the probability amplitude for a particle to travel from one place to another in a given period of time, or to travel with a certain energy and momentum. In Feynman diagrams, which serve to calculate the rate of collisions in quantum field theory, virtual particles contribute their propagator to the rate of the scattering event described by the respective diagram. Propagators may also be viewed as the inverse of the wave operator appropriate to the particle, and are, therefore, often called (causal) Green's functions.
In quantum physics, Fermi's golden rule is a formula that describes the transition rate from one energy eigenstate of a quantum system to a group of energy eigenstates in a continuum, as a result of a weak perturbation. This transition rate is effectively independent of time and is proportional to the strength of the coupling between the initial and final states of the system as well as the density of states. It is also applicable when the final state is discrete, i.e. it is not part of a continuum, if there is some decoherence in the process, like relaxation or collision of the atoms, or like noise in the perturbation, in which case the density of states is replaced by the reciprocal of the decoherence bandwidth.
In differential geometry, the four-gradient is the four-vector analogue of the gradient from vector calculus.
In statistics and information theory, a maximum entropy probability distribution has entropy that is at least as great as that of all other members of a specified class of probability distributions. According to the principle of maximum entropy, if nothing is known about a distribution except that it belongs to a certain class, then the distribution with the largest entropy should be chosen as the least-informative default. The motivation is twofold: first, maximizing entropy minimizes the amount of prior information built into the distribution; second, many physical systems tend to move towards maximal entropy configurations over time.
In quantum mechanics, the probability current is a mathematical quantity describing the flow of probability. Specifically, if one thinks of probability as a heterogeneous fluid, then the probability current is the rate of flow of this fluid. It is a real vector that changes with space and time. Probability currents are analogous to mass currents in hydrodynamics and electric currents in electromagnetism. As in those fields, the probability current is related to the probability density function via a continuity equation. The probability current is invariant under gauge transformation.
Photon polarization is the quantum mechanical description of the classical polarized sinusoidal plane electromagnetic wave. An individual photon can be described as having right or left circular polarization, or a superposition of the two. Equivalently, a photon can be described as having horizontal or vertical linear polarization, or a superposition of the two.
Photon transport in biological tissue can be equivalently modeled numerically with Monte Carlo simulations or analytically by the radiative transfer equation (RTE). However, the RTE is difficult to solve without introducing approximations. A common approximation summarized here is the diffusion approximation. Overall, solutions to the diffusion equation for photon transport are more computationally efficient, but less accurate than Monte Carlo simulations.
Surface-extended X-ray absorption fine structure (SEXAFS) is the surface-sensitive equivalent of the EXAFS technique. This technique involves the illumination of the sample by high-intensity X-ray beams from a synchrotron and monitoring their photoabsorption by detecting in the intensity of Auger electrons as a function of the incident photon energy. Surface sensitivity is achieved by the interpretation of data depending on the intensity of the Auger electrons instead of looking at the relative absorption of the X-rays as in the parent method, EXAFS.
A signal travelling along an electrical transmission line will be partly, or wholly, reflected back in the opposite direction when the travelling signal encounters a discontinuity in the characteristic impedance of the line, or if the far end of the line is not terminated in its characteristic impedance. This can happen, for instance, if two lengths of dissimilar transmission lines are joined.
Heat transfer physics describes the kinetics of energy storage, transport, and energy transformation by principal energy carriers: phonons, electrons, fluid particles, and photons. Heat is thermal energy stored in temperature-dependent motion of particles including electrons, atomic nuclei, individual atoms, and molecules. Heat is transferred to and from matter by the principal energy carriers. The state of energy stored within matter, or transported by the carriers, is described by a combination of classical and quantum statistical mechanics. The energy is different made (converted) among various carriers. The heat transfer processes are governed by the rates at which various related physical phenomena occur, such as the rate of particle collisions in classical mechanics. These various states and kinetics determine the heat transfer, i.e., the net rate of energy storage or transport. Governing these process from the atomic level to macroscale are the laws of thermodynamics, including conservation of energy.
In quantum mechanics, resonance cross section occurs in the context of quantum scattering theory, which deals with studying the scattering of quantum particles from potentials. The scattering problem deals with the calculation of flux distribution of scattered particles/waves as a function of the potential, and of the state of the incident particle. For a free quantum particle incident on the potential, the plane wave solution to the time-independent Schrödinger wave equation is:
| Authority control databases: National |
|---|
