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Thermal de Broglie wavelength (Massless particles)

Description

The thermal de Broglie wavelength is the average de Broglie wavelength of the gas particles in an ideal gas at the specified temperature. We can take the average interparticle spacing in the gas to be approximately (V/N)1/3 where V is the volume and N is the number of particles. When the thermal de Broglie wavelength is much smaller than the interparticle distance, the gas can be considered to be a classical or Maxwell–Boltzmann gas. For a massless particle, the thermal wavelength can be calculated by the speed of light. ( As with the thermal wavelength for massive particles, this is of the order of the average wavelength of the particles in the gas and defines a critical point at which quantum effects begin to dominate)

Related formulas

Variables

ΛThermal de Broglie wavelength (m)
cSpeed of light
hPlanck constant
πpi
kBoltzmann constant
TThe absolute temperature (K)