Hohlraum
Sign in to saveIn radiation thermodynamics, a Hohlraum (; a non-specific German word for a "hollow space", "empty room", or "cavity") is a cavity whose walls are in radiative equilibrium with the radiant energy within the cavity. First proposed by Gustav Kirchhoff in 1860 and used in the study of black-body radiation (Hohlraumstrahlung), this idealized cavity can be approximated in practice by a hollow container of any opaque material. The radiation escaping through a small perforation in the wall of such a container will be a good approximation of black-body radiation at the temperature of the interior of t
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- Applications
- Inertial confinement fusion
- Nuclear weapon design
- See also
- Notes and references
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In radiation thermodynamics, a Hohlraum (; a non-specific German word for a "hollow space", "empty room", or "cavity") is a cavity whose walls are in radiative equilibrium with the radiant energy within the cavity. First proposed by Gustav Kirchhoff in 1860 and used in the study of black-body radiation (Hohlraumstrahlung), this idealized cavity can be approximated in practice by a hollow container of any opaque material. The radiation escaping through a small perforation in the wall of such a container will be a good approximation of black-body radiation at the temperature of the interior of the container. Indeed, a Hohlraum can even be constructed from cardboard, as shown by Purcell's Black Body Box, a Hohlraum demonstrator.
In spectroscopy, the Hohlraum effect occurs when an object achieves thermodynamic equilibrium with an enclosing Hohlraum. As a consequence of Kirchhoff’s law, everything optically blends, and the contrast between the walls and the object effectively disappears.