Advanced Physics Laboratories

In this experiment you will study the splitting of degenerate energy levels in mercury under application of a strong magnetic field. The spectrum is measured using a sensitive Fabry-Perot interferometer, imaged by a computer-controlled CCD. The ability to explain the splitting using the "spin-orbit" coupling is one of the triumphs of atomic spectroscopy, and was also understood by Lorentz as early as 1897 to be evidence that the electron was "in orbit" in the atom.