wahono

IFAE Thursday meeting, oct 26th 2009

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To know the Revolutionary impact of quantum
physics one need first to look at pre-quantum
physics:

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 Max Planck
• 1900 : Max Plank introduced the concept of energy
radiated in discrete quanta.
• Found  relationship between the radiation emited by
a blackbody and its temperature.
• E=hѵ quanta of energy is proportional to the
frequency with which the blackbody radiate

assuming that energies of the vibrating electrons

that radiate the light are quantized  obtain an
expression that agreed with experiment.

he recognized that the theory was

physically absurd, he described as "an act
of desperation" .

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Albert Einstein
 The photoelectric effect

 Not explained by Maxwell's theory since the rate of electrons not depended on the
intensity of light, but in the frequency.

 1905: Einstein applied the idea of Plank's constant to the problem of the photoelectric
effect  light consists of individual quantum particles, which later came to be called
photons (1926).

 Electrons are released from certain materials only when particular frequencies are
reached corresponding to multiples of Plank's constant .

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 Niels Bohr
• 1913 : Bohr quantized energy  explain how electrons orbit a
nucleus.

• Electrons orbit with momenta, and energies quantized.

• Electrons do not loose energy as they orbit the nucleus, only

change their energy by "jumping" between the stationary states
emitting light whose wavelength depends on the energy difference.

• Explained the Rydberg formula (1888), which correctly modeled

the light emission spectra of atomic hydrogen

• Although Bohr's theory was full of contradictions, it provided a

quantitative description of the spectrum of the hydrogen atom

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Two theorist, Niels Bohr and
Max Planck, at the blackboard.

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By the late 1910s :

 1916 Arnold Sommerfeld :

- To account for the Zeeman effect (1896): atomic absorption or emission spectral
lines change when the light is first shinned through a magnetic field,
- he suggested “elliptical orbits” in atoms in addition to spherical orbits.

 In 1924, Louis de Broglie:

- theory of matter waves
- particles can exhibit wave characteristics and vice versa, in analogy to photons.

 1924, another precursor Satyendra N. Bose:

- new way to explain the Planck radiation law.
- He treated light as if it were a gas of massless particles (now called photons).

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Scientific revolution 1925 to
January 1928
• Wolfang Pauli: the exclusion principle

• Werner Heisemberg, with Max Born and Pascual Jordan,

- discovered matrix mechanics first version of quantum mechanics.

• Erwin Schrödinger:
- invented wave mechanics, a second form of quantum mechanics in which
the state of a system is described by a wave function,

• Electrons were shown to obey a new type of statistical law, Fermi- Dirac
statistics

• Heisenberg :Uncertainty Principle.

• Dirac :contributions to quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics

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Many physicists have also contributed to
the quantum theory:
• Max Planck : Light quanta
• Einstein “photon”: photoelectric
• Louis de Broglie: Matter waves
• Erwin Schrödinger: waves equations
• Max Born: probability waves
• Heisenberg: uncertainty
• Paul Dirac: Spin electron equation
• Niels Bohr: Copenhagen Paul Dirac and Werner
• Feynman: Quantum-electrodynamics Heisemberg in Cambrige,1930.
• John Bell: EPR Inequality locality
• David Bohm: Pilot wave (de Broglie)
• ...

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The first Solvay Congress in 1911 assembled the pioneers of
quantum theory.

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Old faces and new at 1927 Solvay Congress

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 Werner Karl Heisenberg : Brief
chronology
• 1901 - 5Dec: He was born in Würzburg, Germany

• 1914 :Outbreak of World War I.

• 1920 he entered at the University of Munich

 Arnold Sommerfeld admitted him to his advanced seminar.

• 1925. 29 June Receipt of Heisenberg's paper providing breakthrough to quantum

mechanics

• 1927. 23 Mar. Receipt of Heisenberg's paper on the uncertainty principle.

• 1932. 7 June Receipt of his first paper on the neutron-proton model of nuclei.

• 1933 .11 Dec. Heisenberg receives Nobel Prize for Physics (for 1932).

• 1976. 1 Feb. Dies because of cancer at his home in Munich.

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Influences
- Studied with three of the world’s leading atomic theorists: Sommerfeld, Max Born and Niels
Bohr.
- In 3 of the world’s leading centres for theoretical atomic physics: Munich, Göttingen and
Copenhagen.
-

Max Born

“From Sommerfeld I
learn optimism, from
the Göttigen people
mathematics and
from Bohr physics” –
Heisemberg

Arnold Sommerfeld (left)

and Niels Bohr

Wolfgang Pauli
- In Munich he began a life-long friendship with Wolfgang Pauli.

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During 1920
 Heisenberg’s travels and teachers during help him to become
one of the leading physicists of his time.

 Goal fortune of entering in the “world atomic physics” just in the

right moment for breakthrough.

 Found that properties of the atoms predicted from the

calculations did not agree with existing experimental data.

 “The old quantum theory”, worked well in simple cases, but

experimental and theoretical study was revealing many problems
 crisis in quantum theory.

 The old quantum theory had failed but Heisenberg and his
colleagues saw exactly where it failed.

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Quantum mechanics
1925-1927
 The leading theory of the atom when Heisenberg entered
at University was quantum theory of Bohr.

 Although it had been highly successful, three areas of

research indicated that this theory was inadequate:

 light emitted and absorbed by atoms

 the predicted properties of atoms and molecules
 The nature of light, did it act like waves or like a stream
of particles?

 1924 physicists were agreed old quantum theory had to

be replaced by “quantum mechanics”.

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The breakthrough to quantum mechanics:
Heisenberg set the task of finding the new
quantum mechanics:
 Since the electron orbits in atoms could not be observed, he tried to
develop a quantum mechanics without them.

 By 1925 he had an answer, but the mathematics was so unfamiliar

that he was not sure if it made any sense.
 These unfamiliar mathematics contain arrays of numbers
known as “matrix”.

 Born sent Heisenberg’s paper off for publication.

“All of my meagre efforts go toward

killing off and suitably replacing the
concept of the orbital path which cannot
observe” Heisemberg, letter to Pauli
1925
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The first page of
Heisenberg's break-
through paper on
quantum mechanics,
published in the
Zeitschrift für Physik, 33
(1925),
“The present paper seeks to
establish a basis for theoretical
quantum mechanics founded
exclusively upon relationships
between quantities which in
principle are observable”.
Heisemberg, summary abstract
of his first paper on quantum
mechanics

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 The wave-function
formulation
1926: Erwin Schrödinger proposed another quantum
mechanics, “wave mechanics”.

Appealed to many physicists because it seemed to

do everything that matrix mechanics could do but
much more easily and seemingly without giving up
the visualization of orbits within the atom.

“I knew of [Heisemberg] theory, of course, but I felt discouraged, not to say

repelled, by the methods of transcendental algebra, which appeared difficult to
me, and by the lack of visualizability.”- Schrödinger in 1926.

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The Uncertainty Principle

1926: The rout to uncertainty relations lies in a debate

between alternative versions of quantum mechanics:

- Heisenberg and his closest colleagues who espoused

the “matrix form” of quantum mechanics

- Schrödinger and his colleagues who espoused the new

“wave mechanics ”.
May 1926, Matrix mechanics and wave mechanics, apparently
incompatible  proof that gave equivalent results.

“The more I think about the physical portion of

Schrödinger’s theory, the more repulsive I find it.. What
Schrödinger writes about the visualizability of his theory is
not quite right, in other words it’s crap” Heisenberg, writing
to Pauli, 1926

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 In 1927 the intensive work led to Heisenberg’s uncertainty
principle and the “Copenhagen Interpretation”

“The more precisely the position is determined, the less

precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and vice
versa” Heisenberg, uncertainty paper, 1927

 After that, Born presented a statistical interpretation of the wave

function, Jordan in Göttingen and Dirac in Cambridge, created
unified equations known as “transformation theory”. The basis of
what is now regarded as quantum mechanics.

 .
The uncertainty principle was not accepted by everyone. It’s
most outspoken opponent was Einstein.

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Conclusion
 The history of Quantum mechanics it’s not easy, many events
pass simultaneously  difficult period.

 Quantum mechanics was created to describe an abstract

atomic world far removed from daily experience, its impact on
our daily lives has become very important.

 Spectacular advances in chemistry, biology, and medicine…

 Quantum information

 The creation of quantum physics has transformed our world,

bringing with it all the benefits—and the risks—of a scientific
revolution.

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Bibliography
 http://www.aip.org/history/heisenberg/p08.htm
 http://www.4physics.com/phy_demo/QM_Article/article.html
 http://www.vcpc.univie.ac.at/~ian/hotlist/qc/qm.shtml
 http://www.slac.stanford.edu/pubs/beamline/30/2/30-2-carson.pdf

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