In the latter case, the main division is between optical and mass spectrometry.
This complexity translates into higher purchase costs, higher operational costs, more operator training, and a greater number of components that can potentially fail.
Because optical spectroscopy is often less expensive and has performance adequate for many tasks, it is far more common.
[citation needed] Atomic absorption spectrometers are one of the most commonly sold and used analytical devices.
The type of atoms present in a sample, or the amount of atoms present in a sample can be deduced from measuring these changes in light wavelength and light intensity.
This absorbance value can then be used to determine the concentration of a given element (or atoms) within the sample.
Of these, flames are the most common due to their low cost and their simplicity.
Although significantly less common, inductively-coupled plasmas, especially when used with mass spectrometers, are recognized for their outstanding analytical performance and their versatility.
Alternatively, one source may be used to vaporize a sample while another is used to atomize (and possibly ionize).
An example of this is laser ablation inductively-coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry, where a laser is used to vaporize a solid sample and an inductively-coupled plasma is used to atomize the vapor.
Using the hydrogen atom as an example, four quantum numbers are required to fully describe the state of the system.
When evaluating the effect of the electric dipole moment operator μ on the wavefunction of the system, we see that all values of the eigenvalue are 0, except for when the changes in the quantum numbers follow a specific pattern.