The Heroic Age by Robert D. Purrington;

Author:Robert D. Purrington;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press USA
Published: 2017-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

NOTES

1Dyson probably would have shared the prize but for the Nobel committee’s restriction to three recipients. On just a small part of his contribution, that of facilitating the use of Feynman diagrams by a generation of young theorists from his position at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, see the paper by Kaiser (2005). Schwinger’s Selected Papers on Quantum Electrodynamics (1958) reprints most of the important papers from that era.

2In his part I (Schrödinger, 1926a), he rather cryptically notes that if the Kepler problem is treated relativistically, it leads to half-integral radial and azimuthal quantum numbers. In part II (1926b) he has ψ satisfying the full elliptic wave equation (Eq. 18) and introduces it again in part IV (Schrödinger, 1926e, Eq. 1). Finally, in an appendix to that paper (sec. 6), Schrödinger essentially derives the Klein Gordon equation. The orbital motion of the electron in a hydrogen atom is, fortunately for Bohr and Schrödinger, nonrelativistic, because the energies are of the order of 1–10 eV, which is about 100,000 times less than the electron rest energy of 0.5 MeV. Which is not to say that there are no relativistic effects, as fine structure has a relativistic origin.

3Which might explain Schrödinger’s reluctance to give up on a wave equation with a second time derivative, as we saw in Chapter 6.

4See, for example, Schrödinger’s “equivalence” paper (1926c).

5Or Klein–Gordon–Fock; see subsequent discussion. Here we speak of Oskar Klein and Walter Gordon. Also Kudar and others. See Schweber (1994), p. 57. Wentzel (1949) called it the Schrödinger–Gordon equation.

6Klein (1926a); Gordon (1926).

7Fock (1926a, 1926b).

8See, for example, Schweber et al. (1955), sec. 10, Muirhead (1965), sec. 4.3, or a variety of current sources. On the Lagrangian and principle of least action, see a mechanics text such as Goldstein (1980).

9In fact, because the pion is a composite particle (quark–antiquark pair), there is no spinless elementary particle, except for the Higgs. The Nobel Prize in physics was awarded for its prediction in 2013, a century after the Bohr theory.

10See Schweber (1961).

11Pauli and Weisskopf (1934).

12A commutator involving ψ and a momentum variable conjugate to it. See Schweber et al. (1955).

13Dirac (1928a). The paper was published just over 2 years after Uhlenbeck and Goudsmit’s first paper. Had things gone differently, Dirac might have had the opportunity to announce, from theory, that the electron must have an intrinsic angular momentum.

14Dirac (1927b).

15Dirac (1928a). The paper was received January 2, 1928. Others, including Pauli, were not far behind.

16That is, only involving ∂/∂t. Dirac (1928), Schweber (1994), pp. 56–8.

17Dirac (1928a). See Kragh (1990), pp. 54–5.

18Dirac developed these ideas in three papers in the Proceedings of the Royal Society: Dirac (1928a, 1928b; 1930b). He also published two papers in German in 1928 in which the theory of the electron was developed: Physik. Zeitschr.39, 561, and Leipsiger Verträge 1928: Quantentheorie und Chemie, p. 85. These are translated in his collected works (Dalitz, 1995).

19See Schweber (1961), Mandl and Shaw (1993), among many possible sources.

20Pauli (1927b); C. G. Darwin (1927).

21Dirac (1928a), p. 612.

22Dirac (1930b). It was submitted on December 6, 1929.

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