The European Physical Journal H最新文献

We examine evaluations of the contributions of Matrix Mechanics and Max Born to the formulation of quantum mechanics from Heisenberg's Helgoland paper of 1925 to Born's Nobel Prize of 1954. We point out that the process of evaluation is continuing in the light of recent interpretations of the theory that deemphasize the importance of the wave function.

A first relation between fluctuation and dissipation occurred in 1905–1908 in the theories of Brownian motion by Albert Einstein, Marian Smoluchowki, and Paul Langevin. Another famous occurrence is in Harry Nyquist's theory of thermal noise in resistors (1927). Many physicists are also aware of the general results and theorems later obtained by Lars Onsager, Herbert Callen, and Ryogo Kubo through highly ingenious reasoning. Also important though mostly forgotten were the direct or indirect contributions by Walther Nernst, John Kirkwood, Melville Green, and Hidetosi Takahasi. Little is known on the context and genesis of these multiple achievements. In this historical study, they will be traced partly to growing interest in the kinetic-theoretical or statistical-mechanical foundation of transport phenomena, partly to practical or industrial motivations regarding electrochemistry, limits of measurement, electronic noise, or magnetic nuclear resonance. Concepts and methods traveled between practical fields and lofty theory. For instance, the theories of Brownian motion and Onsager's fluctuation-based derivation of the reciprocal relations have deep roots in late nineteenth-century electrochemistry, and Callen's theorems relied on methods of circuit theory. Some actors of this history, especially Einstein and Onsager, worked out their main ideas individually. Others like Callen and Kubo had a marked individuality but also profited from collaborations. Nyquist was working for a large corporation, AT&T. In Japan, Kubo benefitted from the growing strength of a Tokyo research group on what we would now call many-body physics.

George Antonovich Gamow (1904–1968) and Ralph Asher Alpher (1921–2007) were associates from 1942 until 1968. In this paper, we examine an intense period of collaboration at George Washington University. Our inquiry pivots on a collection of 53 letters and postcards in the Library of Congress (LoC) that Alpher received from Gamow during his absences from Washington DC. In order to set our examination of the letters in their historical context, we present brief biographies of Gamow and Alpher, summarise the state that nuclear astrophysics had already reached by 1945, and examine the initial impact of the αβγ paper. We conducted detailed analysis of twenty of the LoC letters which documents successive attempts by Alpher and Gamow to address the deficiencies in their model of primordial element building by neutron-capture in the big bang. We give a detailed account of the interactions between Gamow writing from Los Alamos, New Mexico, and his two co-workers Alpher and Robert Herman in Washington DC. The correspondence brings their enthusiasm and commitment to life as they react to the advances and setbacks they encountered. Our narrative illustrates the remarkable partnership that Gamow and Alpher shared, a this was, infused with friendship and therein scientific discovery.

Translation of and Commentary on Léon Rosenfeld’s “Über die Gravitationwirkungen des Lichtes”, Zeitschrift für Physik 65: 589–599 (1930). Originally published in German. Submitted for publication on September 26, 1930. See [1] the Comments with References section before reading this English translation. The gravitational field generated by an electromagnetic field is calculated using of laws of quantum mechanics, and it is shown that the resulting gravitational energy turns out to be infinitely large, raising a new difficulty for the Heisenberg–Pauli quantum theory of wave fields. In addition, the transition processes in first-order approximation involving light and gravitational quanta [2] are briefly discussed.

The discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 at CERN completed the experimental confirmation of the Standard Model particle spectrum. Current theoretical insights and experimental data are inconclusive concerning the expectation of future discoveries. While new physics may still be within reach of the LHC or one of its successor experiments, it is also possible that the mass of particles beyond those of the Standard Model is far beyond the energy reach of any conceivable particle collider. We thus have to face the possibility that the age of “on-shell discoveries” of new particles may belong to the past and that we may soon witness a change in the scientists' perception of discoveries in fundamental physics. This article discusses the relevance of this questioning and addresses some of its potential far-reaching implications through the development, first, of a historical perspective on the concept of particle. This view is prompt to reveal important specificities of the development of particle physics. In particular, it underlines the close relationship between the evolution of observational methods and the understanding of the very idea of particle. Combining this with an analysis of the current situation of high-energy physics, this leads us to the suggestion that the particle era in science must undergo an important conceptual reconfiguration.

We analyzed remarkable stories linked to the famous Anatoly Vlasov equations in plasma physics. Their creation, modification, and application are interesting from the scientific viewpoint. We also show the relations between those equations dealing with electromagnetism and analogous Jeans equations describing, in particular, gravitational instability in astrophysics. The second half of the essay is devoted to the controversies and political struggle in Soviet (before 1991) and Russian (after 1991) physical communities related to Vlasov’s personality, career, and posthumous recognition. The never-ending destructive influence of the Russian totalitarianism on science is demonstrated.

We present a translation of the 1933 paper by R. Fürth in which a profound analogy between quantum fluctuations and Brownian motion is pointed out. Fürth highlights the existence of uncertainty relations involving the variance of a statistically conserved quantity of a non-equilibrium thermodynamic indicator and the variance of the corresponding current velocity. The phenomenon is entirely classical and traces back to the effect of a fluctuating environment on a measured system. In some sense, Fürth’s paper also opened the way to the stochastic methods of quantization developed almost 30 years later by Edward Nelson and others.

The development and evolution of the “Einstein–Æther Theory” (Æ-theory) shows that there is a field in cosmology where the word ether is being used again. It is unclear, however, whether this æther may be regarded in continuation with previous ethers, or it is an altogether new entity. The main goal of this paper is to understand the nature of this new ether in the context of previous instances of this scientific object. In order to do so, we shall first give a brief historical account of the distinct uses the word had assumed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, before its demise. Then, we shall describe the major attempts to revive the ether over the last century, focusing on the last endeavor: the Æ-theory. In this article, we do not intend to support or reject this new use of the word, but to stress the complexity of establishing a consistent historical narrative of some scientific objects like the ether.

The nature of light, the existence of magnetism, and the physical meaning of a vacuum are the problems so deeply related to philosophy that they have been discussed for thousands of years. In this paper, we concentrate ourselves on a question that concerns the three of them: does light speed in a vacuum change when a magnetic field is present? The experimental answer to this fundamental question has not yet been given even if it has been stated in modern terms for more than a century. To fully understand the importance of such a question in physics, we review the main facts and concepts from the historical point of view.