Vibrational temperature explained

The vibrational temperature is commonly used in thermodynamics, to simplify certain equations. It has units of temperature and is defined as

\theta _{vib=} (h \tilde{\nu)/(c}{k) _{B} } = \fracwhere k _{B} is the Boltzmann constant, c is the speed of light, and \nu (Greek letter nu) is the characteristic frequency of the oscillator.

The vibrational temperature is used commonly when finding the vibrational partition function.

Molecule	\tilde{v}	\theta _{vib}
N2	2446 cm^−1	3521 K
O2	1568 cm^−1	2256 K
F2	917 cm^−1	1320 K
HF	4138 cm^−1	5957 K
HCl	2991 cm^−1	4303 K

References

• Statistical thermodynamics University Arizona

See also

• Rotational temperature
• Rotational spectroscopy
• Vibrational spectroscopy
• Infrared spectroscopy
• Spectroscopy