Black Body Radiation

Introduction
A hot object emits electromagnetic radiation. At high temperatures, an appreciable proportion of the radiation is
in the visible region of the spectrum, and a higher proportion of short-wavelength blue light is generated as the
temperature is raised. This behaviour is seen when a heated metal bar glowing red hot becomes white hot
when heated further.
A black body is an ideal emitter which is capable of emitting and absorbing all wavelengths of radiation
uniformly. A good approximation to a black body is a pinhole in an empty container maintained at a constant
temperature, because any radiation leaking out of the hole is absorbed, re-emitted and reflected around inside
the container so many times that it has come to thermal equilibrium with the walls.
An important feature of black body radiation is that the distribution of absorbed or emitted radiation
depends only on the absolute temperature, not on the blackbody material.

Important Experimental Observations

The intensity of radiation is not the same for all wavelengths i.e. not all wavelengths are emitted
equally.
The intensity of radiation at very low wavelengths is negligible i.e. as wavelength approaches zero, the
intensity of radiation of that wavelength approaches zero.
At a given temperature, there is a particular wavelength for which intensity is maximum. This
wavelength decreases as temperature increases.
The total energy density increases as temperature increased(as T4).

Wien's Displacement Law

Wien's displacement law relates the wavelength for which maximum intensity radiation is emitted and the
absolute temperature of the black body.

where the constant, b, known as Wien's displacement constant, is equal to 2.8977721(26)103 K m. This law
helps us in calculating the surface temperature of stars and other distant objects by observing their radiation.
This law helps us in understanding why as a body gets hotter, its colour changes from red to blue.

Stefan-Boltzmann's Law
Stefan-Boltzmann's law states that the emittance i.e the power emitted per unit surface area of a black body is
directly proportional to the fourth power of its absolute temperature.

M = aT4
where a=5.67x10-8Wm-2K-4. This law explains the increasing area under the curve of the graph as temperature
increases.

Rayleigh-Jeans Formula
The Rayleigh-Jeans formula tried to explain black body radiation based on classical mechanics. Energy density
()d is the energy per unit volume associated with radiation of wavelength from to +d, and is proportional
to the emittance. The Rayleigh-Jeans formula is:

()d = 8kBT/4 d
This formula works at long wavelengths but at short wavelengths it fails because as deceases, increases. As a
result, no maxima is attained and energy density keeps increasing indefinitely at low wavelengths. This is
referred to as ultraviolet catastrophe and even objects at room temperature would emit large amounts of energy
in the low wavelength region.

Planck's Formula

Planck successfully explained the phenomenon of black body radiation using the quantisation principle. His
vital assumption was that an oscillator of frequency cannot be excited to any arbitrary energy but only to those
energies which are integral multiples of h where h is a constant called Planck's constant and is equal to
6.626x10-34J s.

E=nh where n=1,2,3,4......

According to Planck's formula, the energy density is:

When is integrated over all , total power radiated is obtained and Stefan-Boltzmann law is obtained. When
is derived w.r.t. , max is obtained. Further, maxT is a constant which is the Wien's displacement law.
When is small, ehc/TkB goes to infinity faster than 5 and hence tends to zero. Thus UV catastrophe is
avoided.
When is large, the Planck's formula reduces to the Rayleigh-Jeans formula and the classical approximation.
Thus , quantum mechanics successfully explained all the experimental observations of black body radiation.

Applications
The phenomenon of black body radiation has many practical applications. IR radiation from the bodies of living
beings and other objects is used in IR photography and night vision goggles which are widely used in the
military sector. The temperature of stars and other distant objects can be determined by examining their
emission spectrum and determining max and then using Wien's law to determine their surface temperatures.
Although planets and stars are neither in thermal equilibrium with their surroundings nor perfect black bodies,
black-body radiation is used as a first approximation for the energy they emit. Black holes are near-perfect black
bodies, in the sense that they absorb all the radiation that falls on them. It has been proposed that they emit
black-body radiation (called Hawking radiation), with a temperature that depends on the mass of the black hole.
Thus, we can see that black body radiation is a vital phenomenon and has many important applications ranging
from photography to cosmology. Its explanation was the stepping stone for the advances in modern quantum
mechanics and the explanation of the structure of the atom.