Physics Abbreviations
68 abbreviations · part of Science & Engineering Abbreviations
Abbreviations from physics: bands of the electromagnetic spectrum (UV, IR, RF, VHF), the major theories (general relativity, quantum mechanics, QED, the Standard Model), particle and fusion research facilities and experiments (CERN, LHC, LIGO, ITER), optics and microscopy, and the symbols for fundamental constants such as c, G and h. Units of measurement such as eV, Hz or tesla are listed separately with measurement abbreviations.
| Abbreviation | Stands for | Description |
|---|---|---|
| AFM | Atomic force microscope | Microscope that maps surfaces by dragging or tapping a tiny tip on a flexible cantilever across them and measuring the deflection with a laser, achieving nanometer and… |
| ALARA | As low as reasonably achievable | Radiation safety principle requiring that exposure to ionizing radiation be kept as low as reasonably achievable while still obtaining the needed diagnostic information… |
| ATLAS | A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS | One of the two general-purpose particle detectors at CERN's Large Hadron Collider, 46 meters long and 25 meters high, the largest by volume ever built for a collider. |
| BEC | Bose-Einstein condensate | State of matter in which a dilute gas of bosons cooled to within a millionth of a degree of absolute zero collapses into a single quantum state, behaving as one giant… |
| c | Speed of light | Speed of light in a vacuum, exactly 299,792,458 meters per second, about 300,000 kilometers per second or 186,000 miles per second. |
| CCD | Charge-coupled device | Light-sensitive chip divided into pixels that convert photons into electric charges, which are shifted out and read row by row to form a digital image. |
| CERN | European Organization for Nuclear Research | International particle physics laboratory founded in 1954, straddling the French-Swiss border near Geneva. |
| CMP | Condensed matter physics | Largest branch of physics, studying the properties of solids and liquids that arise from many interacting particles, including superconductivity, magnetism… |
| CMS | Compact Muon Solenoid | General-purpose particle detector at the Large Hadron Collider that, together with ATLAS, discovered the Higgs boson in 2012. |
| COM | Center of mass | Point where the total mass of an object or system can be considered concentrated for describing its overall motion. |
| CP | Charge-parity (symmetry) | Combined symmetry that swaps particles for antiparticles (charge conjugation, C) and mirrors space (parity, P). |
| ELF | Extremely low frequency | Radio band from 3 to 30 hertz in the ITU scheme, although health studies often use ELF for fields up to 300 hertz, including those from 50 and 60 Hz power lines. |
| EM | Electromagnetic | Relating to electricity and magnetism and their interaction, as in EM waves, the EM spectrum or the EM force. |
| EMF | Electromagnetic field | Physical field produced by electric charges and currents; in health and safety contexts, the low-frequency fields around power lines, wiring and appliances and the… |
| EMP | Electromagnetic pulse | Short, intense burst of electromagnetic energy that can induce damaging currents in electronics and power grids. |
| EMR | Electromagnetic radiation | Energy that travels through space as coupled oscillating electric and magnetic fields at the speed of light, ranging from radio waves through microwaves, infrared… |
| EPR | Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (paradox) | Thought experiment published in 1935 by Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, arguing that quantum mechanics must be incomplete because entangled particles… |
| EUV | Extreme ultraviolet | Very short-wavelength ultraviolet light, roughly 10 to 120 nanometers. |
| FBD | Free-body diagram | Sketch that isolates a single object and shows every force acting on it as an arrow, such as gravity, normal force, tension and friction. |
| FCC | Future Circular Collider | Proposed successor to the Large Hadron Collider, a ring of about 91 kilometers around Geneva. |
| FWHM | Full width at half maximum | Width of a peak or pulse measured between the two points where it falls to half its highest value. |
| g | Acceleration due to gravity | Acceleration of a freely falling object near Earth's surface, about 9.8 meters per second squared (32.2 feet per second squared). |
| GR | General relativity | Albert Einstein's theory of gravity, published in 1915, which describes gravity not as a force but as the curvature of spacetime by mass and energy. |
| GUT | Grand unified theory | Proposed theory in which the strong, weak and electromagnetic forces merge into a single force at extremely high energies, about 10^16 gigaelectronvolts. |
| GW | Gravitational wave | Ripple in the fabric of spacetime produced by accelerating masses, such as merging black holes or neutron stars, and traveling at the speed of light. |
| h | Planck constant | Fundamental constant relating a photon's energy to its frequency, E = hf, and setting the scale of quantum effects. |
| HEP | High-energy physics | Branch of physics that studies elementary particles and their interactions, usually by colliding particles at very high energies in accelerators or by detecting cosmic… |
| HF | High frequency | Radio band from 3 to 30 megahertz, also called shortwave. |
| IR | Infrared | Electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths longer than red light, from about 700 nanometers to 1 millimeter, felt as heat. |
| ITER | International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor | Giant fusion experiment under construction at Saint-Paul-lès-Durance in southern France, funded by the European Union, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the… |
| kB | Boltzmann constant | Constant linking temperature to energy at the level of particles, exactly 1.380649 x 10^-23 joules per kelvin since 2019. |
| KE | Kinetic energy | Energy an object has because of its motion, equal to one half its mass times the square of its speed. |
| laser | Light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation | Device that produces a narrow, intense beam of light of a single color in which the waves march in step. |
| LHC | Large Hadron Collider | World's largest and most powerful particle accelerator, a 27-kilometer ring buried about 100 meters beneath the French-Swiss border near Geneva. |
| lidar | Light detection and ranging | Remote sensing method that fires rapid laser pulses and times their reflections to build precise 3D maps of terrain, buildings, forests and roads. |
| LIGO | Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory | Pair of US observatories in Hanford, Washington, and Livingston, Louisiana, that detect gravitational waves using L-shaped laser interferometers with 4-kilometer arms. |
| maser | Microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation | Microwave counterpart and predecessor of the laser, producing coherent, amplified microwaves. |
| MHD | Magnetohydrodynamics | Study of electrically conducting fluids, such as plasmas, liquid metals and seawater, moving in magnetic fields. |
| NA | Avogadro constant | Number of particles in one mole of a substance, fixed exactly at 6.02214076 x 10^23 per mole since the 2019 redefinition of the SI. |
| NIF | National Ignition Facility | Laser fusion facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, where 192 powerful laser beams compress a peppercorn-sized capsule of hydrogen fuel. |
| NIR | Near-infrared | Shortest-wavelength part of the infrared, just beyond visible red light, commonly about 750 to 1,400 nanometers (some definitions extend to 2,500). |
| PE | Potential energy | Energy stored in an object because of its position or configuration, such as a raised weight, a stretched spring or a charged battery. |
| PMT | Photomultiplier tube | Vacuum tube that detects extremely faint light, down to single photons, by releasing an electron from a photosensitive surface and multiplying it into a measurable… |
| QCD | Quantum chromodynamics | Theory of the strong nuclear force, which binds quarks together into protons, neutrons and other hadrons through the exchange of gluons. |
| QED | Quantum electrodynamics | Quantum field theory of how light and matter interact through the electromagnetic force, describing electrons, positrons and photons. |
| QFT | Quantum field theory | Framework that combines quantum mechanics with special relativity by treating particles as excitations of underlying fields that fill space. |
| QM | Quantum mechanics | Fundamental theory describing matter and light at atomic and subatomic scales, where energy comes in discrete quanta, particles behave like waves and outcomes are given… |
| radar | Radio detection and ranging | System that sends out radio waves and listens for echoes to find the distance, direction and speed of objects such as aircraft, ships, storms and vehicles. |
| RF | Radio frequency | Electromagnetic frequencies used for radio communication, roughly 3 kilohertz to 300 gigahertz. |
| RHIC | Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider | Particle collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, New York, operating since 2000, that smashes gold nuclei and polarized protons. |
| SEM | Scanning electron microscope | Microscope that scans a focused electron beam across a sample and builds an image from emitted electrons, revealing surface texture in striking 3D-looking detail at… |
| SHM | Simple harmonic motion | Repetitive back-and-forth motion in which the restoring force is proportional to the displacement from equilibrium, producing a sinusoidal oscillation with a constant… |
| SLAC | SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory | US Department of Energy laboratory in Menlo Park, California, operated by Stanford University, home to a 3.2-kilometer linear accelerator built in the 1960s. |
| SM | Standard Model | Theory of particle physics that describes all known elementary particles, six quarks, six leptons, the force-carrying gauge bosons and the Higgs boson, and three of the… |
| sonar | Sound navigation and ranging | Technique that uses sound waves underwater to detect objects and measure distances by timing echoes. |
| SQUID | Superconducting quantum interference device | Extremely sensitive magnetometer made of superconducting loops containing Josephson junctions, able to detect magnetic fields billions of times weaker than Earth's. |
| SR | Special relativity | Einstein's 1905 theory of space and time for observers moving at constant velocity, built on the principle that the speed of light is the same for everyone. |
| STM | Scanning tunneling microscope | Instrument that images conducting surfaces atom by atom by moving an extremely sharp tip just above them and measuring the quantum tunneling current that flows across… |
| SUSY | Supersymmetry | Proposed symmetry in which every known particle has a heavier partner with spin differing by one half, so that matter particles pair with force-carrying "sparticles."… |
| TEM | Transmission electron microscope | Microscope that sends a beam of electrons through an ultrathin sample, producing images of internal structure at resolutions down to a fraction of a nanometer, enough… |
| TOE | Theory of everything | Hypothetical single framework that would explain all fundamental forces, including gravity, and all particles in one consistent theory. |
| TOF | Time of flight | Measurement of how long a particle, ion or light pulse takes to travel a known distance, used to determine its speed, mass or the distance to a surface. |
| UHF | Ultra high frequency | Radio band from 300 megahertz to 3 gigahertz, home to television channels, mobile phone networks, GPS, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth at 2.4 GHz, walkie-talkies and microwave ovens. |
| UV | Ultraviolet | Electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths shorter than violet light, about 10 to 400 nanometers, invisible to the human eye. |
| UVA | Ultraviolet A | Longest-wavelength band of ultraviolet light, 315 to 400 nanometers, which makes up about 95% of the UV reaching the ground. |
| UVB | Ultraviolet B | Middle band of ultraviolet light, 280 to 315 nanometers, mostly absorbed by the ozone layer but responsible for sunburn and much skin cancer. |
| UVC | Ultraviolet C | Shortest-wavelength band of ultraviolet commonly defined, 100 to 280 nanometers, completely absorbed by Earth's atmosphere. |
| VHF | Very high frequency | Radio band from 30 to 300 megahertz, used for FM broadcasting (88-108 MHz), aircraft voice communication (118-137 MHz), marine radio, some television channels and… |
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