Extinction coefficient
Extinction coefficient refers to several different measures of the absorption of light in a medium:
- In chemistry, the mass extinction coefficient (also called mass attenuation coefficient or mass absorption coefficient) and the molar extinction coefficient are parameters defining how strongly a substance absorbs light at a given wavelength, per mass unit or per molar concentration, respectively.
- In physics, the "extinction coefficient" is the imaginary part of the complex index of refraction, which also relates to light absorption.
- In disciplines of biochemistry, molecular biology or microbiology, it is used in the context of how strongly a substance absorbs light at a given wavelength per molar concentration, typically A µM-1 cm-1. Note that absorbance (A) has no units.
(For the quantitative relationship between the chemistry and physics definitions, see Mathematical descriptions of opacity.)
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