Home - Why is the sky blue? Matt McIrvin mmcirvin@world.std.com

How scattering varies with frequency

The fourth power

The electric and magnetic fields in the waves that make up the emitted radiation are proportional to various rates of change of the potentials, in space and time.

They get a factor of frequency from the fact that the potentials are proportional to frequency; but they also get another factor of the frequency from the fact that the shorter a wave is, the faster it varies in space; and the higher its frequency is, the faster it varies in time. So the fields are proportional to the square of the frequency.

But we are not done yet! The important thing is how much power is transmitted by the wave, and that is proportional to the product of the electric field and the magnetic field. So the power density in the wave goes up as the fourth power of the frequency.

A continuous spectrum

Therefore, the spectrum of the radiated light, and the scattered light from an induced dipole, will be very strongly peaked at high frequencies, or short wavelengths. However, there is some light of lower frequencies as well, which is why we see the color as a light turquoise rather than deep violet. The light is scattered all across the spectrum, but high frequencies are scattered much more than low frequencies.

This sort of scattering is called Rayleigh scattering, after Lord Rayleigh, who first worked it out for a very small classical dipole.

Niceties

There are things I have neglected here, such as the fact that sometimes, there are resonant frequencies at which a molecular dipole oscillates particularly strongly when driven by an oscillating field. These resonances are determined by the quantum mechanics of the molecule. However, in this particular case, resonance is not a major contributor at visible wavelengths.

A full analysis would also take into account the fact that the electromagnetic field is quantized; the energy comes in photons. But that turns out not to affect the fourth-power dependence of the spectrum on frequency.

Last modified April 6, 2001
Home - Why is the sky blue? - Top Matt McIrvin mmcirvin@world.std.com