The Stefan–Boltzmann law, also known as Stefan's law, describes the intensity of the
thermal radiation emitted by matter in terms of that matter's
temperature. It is named for
Josef Stefan, who empirically derived the relationship, and
Ludwig Boltzmann who derived the law theoretically.
For an ideal absorber/emitter or
black body, the Stefan–Boltzmann law states that the total
energy radiated per unit
surface area per unit
time (also known as the radiant exitance) is directly
proportional to the fourth power of the black body's temperature, T:
In the general case, the Stefan–Boltzmann law for radiant exitance takes the form:
where is the
emissivity of the matter doing the emitting. The emissivity is generally between zero and one, although some exotic materials may have an emissivity greater than one. An emissivity of one corresponds to a black body.
To find the total
power, , radiated from an object, multiply the radiant exitance by the object's surface area, :
Matter that does not absorb all incident radiation emits less total energy than a black body. Emissions are reduced by a factor , where the
emissivity, , is a material property which, for most matter, satisfies . Emissivity can in general depend on
wavelength, direction, and
polarization. However, the emissivity which appears in the non-directional form of the Stefan–Boltzmann law is the
hemispherical total emissivity, which reflects emissions as totaled over all wavelengths, directions, and polarizations.[2]: 60
The form of the Stefan–Boltzmann law that includes emissivity is applicable to all matter, provided that matter is in a state of
local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE) so that its temperature is well-defined.[2]: 66n, 541 (This is a trivial conclusion, since the emissivity, , is defined to be the quantity that makes this equation valid. What is non-trivial is the proposition that , which is a consequence of
Kirchhoff's law of thermal radiation.[3]: 385 )
A so-called grey body is a body for which the
spectral emissivity is independent of wavelength, so that the total emissivity, , is a constant.[2]: 71 In the more general (and realistic) case, the spectral emissivity depends on wavelength. The total emissivity, as applicable to the Stefan–Boltzmann law, may be calculated as a
weighted average of the spectral emissivity, with the
blackbody emission spectrum serving as the
weighting function. It follows that if the spectral emissivity depends on wavelength then the total emissivity depends on the temperature, i.e., .[2]: 60 However, if the dependence on wavelength is small, then the dependence on temperature will be small as well.
Wavelength- and subwavelength-scale particles,[4]metamaterials,[5] and other nanostructures[6] are not subject to ray-optical limits and may be designed to have an emissivity greater than 1.
In national and
international standards documents, the symbol is recommended to denote radiant exitance; a superscript circle (°) indicates a term relate to a black body.[1] (A subscript "e" is added when it is important to distinguish the energetic (
radiometric) quantity radiant exitance, , from the analogous human vision (
photometric) quantity, luminous exitance, denoted .[7]) In common usage, the symbol used for radiant exitance (often called radiant emittance) varies among different texts and in different fields.
The Stefan–Boltzmann law may be expressed as a formula for radiance as a function of temperature. Radiance is measured in watts per square metre per
steradian (W⋅m−2⋅sr−1). The Stefan–Boltzmann law for the radiance of a black body is:[8]: 26 [9]
In 1864,
John Tyndall presented measurements of the infrared emission by a platinum filament and the corresponding color of the filament.[11][12][13][14]
The proportionality to the fourth power of the absolute temperature was deduced by
Josef Stefan (1835–1893) in 1877 on the basis of Tyndall's experimental measurements, in the article Über die Beziehung zwischen der Wärmestrahlung und der Temperatur (On the relationship between thermal radiation and temperature) in the Bulletins from the sessions of the Vienna Academy of Sciences.[15]
A derivation of the law from theoretical considerations was presented by
Ludwig Boltzmann (1844–1906) in 1884, drawing upon the work of
Adolfo Bartoli.[16]
Bartoli in 1876 had derived the existence of
radiation pressure from the principles of
thermodynamics. Following Bartoli, Boltzmann considered an ideal
heat engine using electromagnetic radiation instead of an ideal gas as working matter.
With his law, Stefan also determined the temperature of the
Sun's surface.[23] He inferred from the data of
Jacques-Louis Soret (1827–1890)[24] that the energy flux density from the Sun is 29 times greater than the energy flux density of a certain warmed metal
lamella (a thin plate). A round lamella was placed at such a distance from the measuring device that it would be seen at the same
angular diameter as the Sun. Soret estimated the temperature of the lamella to be approximately 1900
°C to 2000 °C. Stefan surmised that 1/3 of the energy flux from the Sun is absorbed by the
Earth's atmosphere, so he took for the correct Sun's energy flux a value 3/2 times greater than Soret's value, namely 29 × 3/2 = 43.5.
Precise measurements of atmospheric
absorption were not made until 1888 and 1904. The temperature Stefan obtained was a median value of previous ones, 1950 °C and the absolute thermodynamic one 2200 K. As 2.574 = 43.5, it follows from the law that the temperature of the Sun is 2.57 times greater than the temperature of the lamella, so Stefan got a value of 5430 °C or 5700 K. This was the first sensible value for the temperature of the Sun. Before this, values ranging from as low as 1800 °C to as high as 13000000 °C[25] were claimed. The lower value of 1800 °C was determined by
Claude Pouillet (1790–1868) in 1838 using the
Dulong–Petit law.[26][27] Pouillet also took just half the value of the Sun's correct energy flux.
Temperature of stars
The temperature of
stars other than the Sun can be approximated using a similar means by treating the emitted energy as a
black body radiation.[28] So:
where L is the
luminosity, σ is the Stefan–Boltzmann constant, R is the stellar radius and T is the
effective temperature. This formula can then be rearranged to calculate the temperature:
or alternatively the radius:
The same formulae can also be simplified to compute the parameters relative to the Sun:
where is the
solar radius, and so forth. They can also be rewritten in terms of the surface area A and radiant exitance :
Similarly we can calculate the
effective temperature of the Earth T⊕ by equating the energy received from the Sun and the energy radiated by the Earth, under the black-body approximation (Earth's own production of energy being small enough to be negligible). The luminosity of the Sun, L⊙, is given by:
At Earth, this energy is passing through a sphere with a radius of a0, the distance between the Earth and the Sun, and the
irradiance (received power per unit area) is given by
The Earth has a radius of R⊕, and therefore has a cross-section of . The
radiant flux (i.e. solar power) absorbed by the Earth is thus given by:
Because the Stefan–Boltzmann law uses a fourth power, it has a stabilizing effect on the exchange and the flux emitted by Earth tends to be equal to the flux absorbed, close to the steady state where:
T⊕ can then be found:
where T⊙ is the temperature of the Sun, R⊙ the radius of the Sun, and a0 is the distance between the Earth and the Sun. This gives an effective temperature of 6 °C on the surface of the Earth, assuming that it perfectly absorbs all emission falling on it and has no atmosphere.
The Earth has an
albedo of 0.3, meaning that 30% of the solar radiation that hits the planet gets scattered back into space without absorption. The effect of albedo on temperature can be approximated by assuming that the energy absorbed is multiplied by 0.7, but that the planet still radiates as a black body (the latter by definition of
effective temperature, which is what we are calculating). This approximation reduces the temperature by a factor of 0.71/4, giving 255 K (−18 °C; −1 °F).[29][30]
The above temperature is Earth's as seen from space, not ground temperature but an average over all emitting bodies of Earth from surface to high altitude. Because of the
greenhouse effect, the Earth's actual average surface temperature is about 288 K (15 °C; 59 °F), which is higher than the 255 K (−18 °C; −1 °F) effective temperature, and even higher than the 279 K (6 °C; 43 °F) temperature that a black body would have.
In the above discussion, we have assumed that the whole surface of the earth is at one temperature. Another interesting question is to ask what the temperature of a blackbody surface on the earth would be assuming that it reaches equilibrium with the sunlight falling on it. This of course depends on the angle of the sun on the surface and on how much air the sunlight has gone through. When the sun is at the zenith and the surface is horizontal, the irradiance can be as high as 1120 W/m2.[31] The Stefan–Boltzmann law then gives a temperature of
or 102 °C (216 °F). (Above the atmosphere, the result is even higher: 394 K (121 °C; 250 °F).) We can think of the earth's surface as "trying" to reach equilibrium temperature during the day, but being cooled by the atmosphere, and "trying" to reach equilibrium with starlight and possibly moonlight at night, but being warmed by the atmosphere.
From the definition of energy density it follows that
where the energy density of radiation only depends on the temperature, therefore
Now, the equality is
after substitution of
Meanwhile, the pressure is the rate of momentum change per unit area. Since the momentum of a photon is the same as the energy divided by the speed of light,
where the factor 1/3 comes from the projection of the momentum transfer onto the normal to the wall of the container.
Since the partial derivative can be expressed as a relationship between only and (if one isolates it on one side of the equality), the partial derivative can be replaced by the ordinary derivative. After separating the differentials the equality becomes
which leads immediately to , with as some constant of integration.
Derivation from Planck's law
The law can be derived by considering a small flat
black body surface radiating out into a half-sphere. This derivation uses
spherical coordinates, with θ as the zenith angle and φ as the azimuthal angle; and the small flat blackbody surface lies on the xy-plane, where θ = π/2.
The intensity of the light emitted from the blackbody surface is given by
Planck's law,
The quantity is the
power radiated by a surface of area A through a
solid angledΩ in the frequency range between ν and ν + dν.
The Stefan–Boltzmann law gives the power emitted per unit area of the emitting body,
Note that the cosine appears because black bodies are Lambertian (i.e. they obey
Lambert's cosine law), meaning that the intensity observed along the sphere will be the actual intensity times the cosine of the zenith angle.
To derive the Stefan–Boltzmann law, we must integrate over the half-sphere and integrate from 0 to ∞.
Then we plug in for I:
To evaluate this integral, do a substitution,
which gives:
The integral on the right is standard and goes by many names: it is a particular case of a
Bose–Einstein integral, the
polylogarithm, or the
Riemann zeta function. The value of the integral is (where is the
Gamma function), giving the result that, for a perfect blackbody surface:
Finally, this proof started out only considering a small flat surface. However, any
differentiable surface can be approximated by a collection of small flat surfaces. So long as the geometry of the surface does not cause the blackbody to reabsorb its own radiation, the total energy radiated is just the sum of the energies radiated by each surface; and the total surface area is just the sum of the areas of each surface—so this law holds for all
convex blackbodies, too, so long as the surface has the same temperature throughout. The law extends to radiation from non-convex bodies by using the fact that the
convex hull of a black body radiates as though it were itself a black body.
Energy density
The total energy density U can be similarly calculated, except the integration is over the whole sphere and there is no cosine, and the energy flux (U c) should be divided by the velocity c to give the energy density U:
Thus is replaced by , giving an extra factor of 4.
Thus, in total:
The product is sometimes known as the radiation constant or radiation density constant.[33][34]
Marr and Wilkin (2012) recommend that students be taught about instead of being taught
Wien's displacement law, and that the above decomposition be taught when the Stefan–Boltzmann law is taught.[35]
^In his physics textbook of 1875,
Adolph Wüllner quoted Tyndall's results and then added estimates of the temperature that corresponded to the platinum filament's color:
Wüllner, Adolph (1875).
Lehrbuch der Experimentalphysik [Textbook of experimental physics] (in German). Vol. 3. Leipzig, Germany: B.G. Teubner. p. 215.
^From (Wüllner, 1875), p. 215: "Wie aus gleich zu besprechenden Versuchen von Draper hervorgeht, … also fast um das 12fache zu." (As follows from the experiments of Draper, which will be discussed shortly, a temperature of about 525°[C] corresponds to the weak red glow; a [temperature] of about 1200°[C], to the full white glow. Thus, while the temperature climbed only somewhat more than double, the intensity of the radiation increased from 10.4 to 122; thus, almost 12-fold.)
^Stefan stated (
Stefan 1879, p. 421): "Zuerst will ich hier die Bemerkung anführen, … die Wärmestrahlung der vierten Potenz der absoluten Temperatur proportional anzunehmen." (First of all, I want to point out here the observation which Wüllner, in his textbook, added to the report of Tyndall's experiments on the radiation of a platinum wire that was brought to glowing by an electric current, because this observation first caused me to suppose that thermal radiation is proportional to the fourth power of the absolute temperature.)
^Campana, S.; Mangano, V.; Blustin, A. J.; Brown, P.; Burrows, D. N.; Chincarini, G.; Cummings, J. R.; Cusumano, G.; Valle, M. Della; Malesani, D.; Mészáros, P.; Nousek, J. A.; Page, M.; Sakamoto, T.; Waxman, E. (August 2006). "The association of GRB 060218 with a supernova and the evolution of the shock wave". Nature. 442 (7106): 1008–1010.
arXiv:astro-ph/0603279.
Bibcode:
2006Natur.442.1008C.
doi:
10.1038/nature04892.
ISSN0028-0836.
PMID16943830.
S2CID119357877.
Stefan, J. (1879),
"Über die Beziehung zwischen der Wärmestrahlung und der Temperatur" [On the relationship between heat radiation and temperature] (PDF), Sitzungsberichte der Mathematisch-naturwissenschaftlichen Classe der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften (in German), 79: 391–428
Boltzmann, L. (1884), "Ableitung des Stefan'schen Gesetzes, betreffend die Abhängigkeit der Wärmestrahlung von der Temperatur aus der electromagnetischen Lichttheorie" [Derivation of Stefan's little law concerning the dependence of thermal radiation on the temperature of the electro-magnetic theory of light], Annalen der Physik und Chemie (in German), 258 (6): 291–294,
Bibcode:
1884AnP...258..291B,
doi:10.1002/andp.18842580616