What Is the Magnetic Quantum Number?

The magnetic quantum number represents the orbit (orbit direction) of each sublayer. Several orbits of the same sublayer (with the same value of l) have different orientations to the nuclei. The magnetic quantum number Me describes the stretching direction of atomic orbits or electron clouds in space. Atomic orbits of a certain shape can be stretched in different directions in space to obtain several atomic orbits with different spatial orientations. This is based on the fact that the linear spectrum can also split in a magnetic field and show a small energy difference.

The magnetic quantum number represents the orbit (orbit direction) of each sublayer. Several orbit pairs in the same sublayer (same value of l)

The value of the magnetic quantum number m is constrained by the angular quantum number l. For a given value of l, m {m | m Z and | m | , 0, +1, +2 ... + l, a total of 2l + 1 values. These values imply that there are 2l + 1 orientations in a sublayer with an angular quantum number of 1, and each orientation is equivalent to an "atomic orbit". For example, the sublayer d of l = 2, m = -2, -1, 0, +1, +2, there are 5 values in total, which means that the sublayer d has 5 atomic orbitals with different stretching directions, that is,

,

,

,

,

. We call atomic orbits with different extension directions in the same sublayer (same as l and n) as equivalent or degenerate orbits.

The value of angular quantum number l	0 (s sublayer)	1 (p sublayer)	2 (d sublayer)	3 (f sublayer)
Value of magnetic quantum number m	0	0, ± 1	0, ± 1, ± 2	0, ± 1, ± 2, ± 3
Number of tracks	1	3	5	7

Each number represents 1 track, and each track is perpendicular to each other.