Bohr radius

The Bohr radius (a0 or rBohr) is a physical constant, exactly equal to the most probable distance between the nucleus and the electron in a hydrogen atom in its ground state. It is named after Niels Bohr, due to its role in the Bohr model of an atom. Its value is 5.29177210903(80)×10−11 m.[1][note 1]

Bohr radius
Unit oflength
Named afterNiels Bohr
1 a0 in ...... is equal to ...
   SI units   5.29×10−11 m
   imperial/US units   2.08×10−9 in
   natural units   2.68×10−4/eV
3.27×1024 P

Definition and value

In SI units the Bohr radius is:[2]


is the Bohr radius,
is the permittivity of free space,
is the reduced Planck's constant,
is the electron rest mass,
is the elementary charge,
is the speed of light in vacuum, and
is the fine structure constant.

In Gaussian units the Bohr radius is simply

According to 2014 CODATA the Bohr radius has a value of (considering mass of electron as the rest mass of an electron) 5.2917721067(12)×10−11 m (i.e., approximately 53 pm or 0.53 Å).[3][note 1]

A derivation of the Bohr radius for the n-th excited state of a Hydrogen-like atom is given on the main page for the Bohr model.


In the Bohr model for atomic structure, put forward by Niels Bohr in 1913, electrons orbit a central nucleus under electrostatic attraction. The original derivation posited that electrons have orbital angular momentum in integer multiples of the reduced Planck constant, which successfully matched the observation of discrete energy levels in emission spectra, along with predicting a fixed radius for each of these levels. In the simplest atom, hydrogen, a single electron orbits the nucleus, and its smallest possible orbit, with lowest energy, has an orbital radius almost equal to the Bohr radius. (It is not exactly the Bohr radius due to the reduced mass effect. They differ by about 0.05%.)

The Bohr model of the atom was superseded by an electron probability cloud obeying the Schrodinger equation, which is further complicated by spin and quantum vacuum effects to produce fine structure and hyperfine structure. Nevertheless the Bohr radius formula remains central in atomic physics calculations, due in part to its simple relationship with other fundamental constants. (This is why it is defined using the true electron mass rather than the reduced mass, as mentioned above.) For example, it is the unit of length in atomic units.

An important distinction is that the Bohr radius gives the radius with the maximum radial probability density,[4] not its expected radial distance. The expected radial distance is actually 1.5 times the Bohr radius, as a result of the long tail of the radial wave function. Another important distinction is that in three-dimensional space, the maximum probability density occurs at the location of the nucleus and not at the Bohr radius, whereas the radial probability density peaks at the Bohr radius, i.e. when plotting the probability distribution in its radial dependency.

The Bohr radius of the electron is one of a trio of related units of length, the other two being the Compton wavelength of the electron and the classical electron radius . The Bohr radius is built from the electron mass , Planck's constant and the electron charge . The Compton wavelength is built from , and the speed of light . The classical electron radius is built from , and . Any one of these three lengths can be written in terms of any other using the fine structure constant :

The Bohr radius is about 19,000 times bigger than the classical electron radius (i.e. the common scale of atoms is angstrom, while the scale of particles is femtometer). The electron's Compton wavelength is about 20 times smaller than the Bohr radius, and the classical electron radius is about 1000 times smaller than the electron's Compton wavelength.

"Reduced" Bohr radius

The Bohr radius including the effect of reduced mass in the hydrogen atom can be given by the following equations:


is the Compton wavelength of the proton,
is the Compton wavelength of the electron,
is the reduced Planck's constant,
is the fine structure constant,
is the speed of light,
is the reduced mass of the electron/proton system,
is the permittivity of free space,
is the magnitude of the electron's charge,
is the magnitude of the proton's charge.

In the first equation, the effect of the reduced mass is achieved by using the increased Compton wavelength, which is just the sum of the electron and proton Compton wavelengths. The use of reduced mass is inherently a classical generalization of the two-body problem when we are outside the approximation that the mass of the orbiting body is much less than the mass of the body being orbited.

Notably, the reduced mass of the electron/proton system will be (very slightly) smaller than the electron mass, so the "Reduced Bohr radius" is actually larger than the typical value ( or meters).

Radii in similar systems

This result can be generalized to other systems, such as positronium (an electron orbiting a positron) and muonium (an electron orbiting an anti-muon) by using the reduced mass (or equivalently Compton wavelength sum) of the system and considering the possible change in charge. Typically, Bohr model relations (radius, energy, etc.) can be easily modified for these exotic systems (up to lowest order) by simply replacing the electron mass with the reduced mass for the system (as well as adjusting the charge when appropriate). For example, the radius of positronium is approximately , since the reduced mass of the positronium system is half the electron mass (), while the reduced mass for the electron/proton system is approximately the electron mass (), as discussed above.

Another important observation is that any Hydrogen-like atom will have a Bohr radius which primarily changes as , with Z the number of protons in the nucleus. This can be seen in the last equation to be a result of . Meanwhile, the reduced mass () only becomes better approximated by in the limit of increasing nuclear mass. These results are summarized in the equation,

A table of approximate relationships is given below:

Bohr radius
"Reduced" Bohr radius
Positronium radius
Muonium radius
He+ radius
Li2+ radius

See also


  1. The number in parenthesis denotes the uncertainty of the last digits.


  1. "2018 CODATA Value: Bohr radius". The NIST Reference on Constants, Units, and Uncertainty. NIST. 20 May 2019. Retrieved 2019-05-20.
  2. David J. Griffiths, Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, Prentice-Hall, 1995, p. 137. ISBN 0-13-124405-1
  3. "CODATA Value: Bohr radius". Fundamental Physical Constants. NIST. Retrieved 13 February 2016.
  4. Zettili, Nouredine (2009). Quantum Mechanics: Concepts and Applications (2nd ed.). Chichester: Wiley. p. 376. ISBN 978-0-470-02678-6.