Ultraviolet divergence short distances. The name comes from the earliest example of such a divergence, the "ultraviolet catastrophe" first encountered in understanding blackbody radiation. According to classical physics at the end of the nineteenth century, the quantity of radiation in the form of light released at any specific wavelength should increase with decreasing wavelength—in particular, there should be considerably more ultraviolet light released from a blackbody radiator than infrared light. Measurements showed the opposite, with maximal energy released at intermediate wavelengths, suggesting a failure of classical mechanics. This problem eventually led to the development of quantum mechanics. The successful resolution of the
Ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy seen a considerable revival with the increasing availability of synchrotron light sources which provide a wide range of monochromatic photon energies. Ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy Ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy (UPS) refers to the measurement of kinetic energy spectra of photoelectrons emitted by molecules which have absorbed ultraviolet photons, in order to determine molecular orbital energies in the valence region. If Einstein's photoelectric law is applied to a free molecule, the kinetic energy (formula_1) of an emitted photoelectron is given by where "h" is Planck's constant, ν is the frequency of the ionizing light, and I is an ionization energy for the formation