Extinction coefficient

Extinction coefficient refers to several different measures of the absorption of light in a medium:

• Attenuation coefficient, sometimes called "extinction coefficient" in meteorology or climatology
  • Mass extinction coefficient, how strongly a substance absorbs light at a given wavelength, per mass density
  • Molar extinction coefficient, how strongly a substance absorbs light at a given wavelength, per molar concentration
• Optical extinction coefficient, the imaginary part of the complex index of refraction

See also

• For the quantitative relationship between the chemistry and physics definitions, see Mathematical descriptions of opacity