structural:scholar_edition, structural:reformatting
Energy of ground state and excited states

The energy associated to an electron is that of its orbital. The energy of a configuration is often approximated as the sum of the energy of each electron, neglecting the electron-electron interactions. The configuration that corresponds to the lowest electronic energy is called the ground state. Any other configuration is an excited state.

As an example, the ground state configuration of the sodium atom is 1s 2s 2p 3s, as deduced from the Aufbau principle (see below). The first excited state is obtained by promoting a 3s electron to the 3p subshell, to obtain the1s 2s 2p 3p configuration, abbreviated as the 3p level. Atoms can move from one configuration to another by absorbing or emitting energy. In a sodium-vapor lamp for example, sodium atoms are excited to the 3p level by an electrical discharge, and return to the ground state by emitting yellow light of wavelength 589 nm.

Usually, the excitation of valence electrons (such as 3s for sodium) involves energies corresponding to photons of visible or ultraviolet light. The excitation of core electrons is possible, but requires much higher energies, generally corresponding to X-ray photons. This would be the case for example to excite a 2p electron of sodium to the 3s level and form the excited 1s 2s 2p 3s configuration.

The remainder of this article deals only with the ground-state configuration, often referred to as "the" configuration of an atom or molecule.