In chromatography, resolution is a measure of the separation of two peaks of different retention time t in a chromatogram.
Chromatographic peak resolution is given by
where t<sub>R</sub> is the retention time and w<sub>b</sub> is the peak width at baseline. The bigger the time-difference and/or the smaller the bandwidths, the better the resolution of the compounds. Here compound 1 elutes before compound 2.
If the peaks have the same width
The theoretical plate height is given by
where L is the column length and N the number of theoretical plates. The relation between plate number and peak width at the base is given by