1. A unit of electrical capacitance in the centimeter-gram-second (CGS) system, equal to 10^−9 farads.
Usage: technical; physics; rarely used in modern practice; the farad is the standard SI unit

Examples

• The capacitor was measured in abfarads using the older CGS system.
• In historical physics texts, capacitance values were sometimes expressed in abfarads.
• One abfarad equals one billionth of a farad in the modern SI system.