Customising exponents in siunitx

Typesetting SI units in LaTeX can be done using the siunitx package.  One disadvantage is that siunitx doesn’t like math-mode inside the numbers it has to print. This makes it a little tricky to add unusual exponents or do other formatting that is easy in math-mode.  Therefore, siunitx includes a parser that figures out such things as \SI{5 x 2}{\metre} should appear as follows:

Another use is typesetting numbers with exponents, such as the following:


\SI{.23e7}{\candela}



The “e7” results in the exponent  being included producing the following output:

What if you want a different exponent that has meaning in your specific field?  Fortunately, siunitx includes a method for you to define new exponents:


\SI[exponent-base=1024, input-exponent-markers=k]{5k2}{elements\per\second}



This produces the following:

I found this solution here.  The other solution is to disable the parser by using parse-numbers=false like in this example from the siunitx documentation:


\SI[parse-numbers=false]{\sqrt{3}}{\metre}



This allows all math-mode commands to be used.  The resulting output is: