QED and the Men who Made it: Dyson, Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga

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Princeton University Press, 1994 M04 24 - 732 páginas

In the 1930s, physics was in a crisis. There appeared to be no way to reconcile the new theory of quantum mechanics with Einstein's theory of relativity. Several approaches had been tried and had failed. In the post-World War II period, four eminent physicists rose to the challenge and developed a calculable version of quantum electrodynamics (QED), probably the most successful theory in physics. This formulation of QED was pioneered by Freeman Dyson, Richard Feynman, Julian Schwinger, and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, three of whom won the Nobel Prize for their work. In this book, physicist and historian Silvan Schweber tells the story of these four physicists, blending discussions of their scientific work with fascinating biographical sketches.

Setting the achievements of these four men in context, Schweber begins with an account of the early work done by physicists such as Dirac and Jordan, and describes the gathering of eminent theorists at Shelter Island in 1947, the meeting that heralded the new era of QED. The rest of his narrative comprises individual biographies of the four physicists, discussions of their major contributions, and the story of the scientific community in which they worked. Throughout, Schweber draws on his technical expertise to offer a lively and lucid explanation of how this theory was finally established as the appropriate way to describe the atomic and subatomic realms.

 

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Contenido

1 The Birth of Quantum Field
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The problem Jordan addressed in the last section of the
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treatment in which the fluctuations were calculated as time averages
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One thus obtains
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where Vx t is a field
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Then satisfies the equation
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equation one obtains
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2 The 1930s
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where
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On the other hand if u is large
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8 Richard Feynman and the
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system with an infinite number of degrees of freedom
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right character to represent radiation reaction Wheeler asked Feynman
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where
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except that the exponents were real He could arrive
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described by Lagrangian Ly and L₂ so that the total
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Rfi
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photon
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3 The War and Its Aftermath
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outstanding graduate student to do a similar analysis for
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Shelter
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the mesonic component of cosmic rays Marshak and Bethe
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looking for challenging new problems after the war The
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Commenting on the events of the morning Darrow made
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In retrospect perhaps the most important lesson that could
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5 The Lamb Shift and the Magnetic
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52 The Experimental Situation during the 1930s
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2P32
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work Once you had started the wave rolling
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JUL
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In the Lamb shift experiment the metastable atoms are subjected
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The line shape in this case is given by the
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that were present in the theory that helped determine the
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the relevant part of the selfenergy becomes
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infinite selfenergy was obtained by a
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6 Tomonaga and the Rebuilding
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approach was socratic and students said of him that
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7 Julian Schwinger and the
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where the A2 term has been omitted In dipole
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After a long calculation Schwinger obtained the result
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term in 7464 gives rise to a one
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The predicted additional magnetic moment accounted for the hyperfine
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ἀμπ
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solution can be written in the form
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t
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2
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9 Freeman Dyson and the Structure
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sure at that point whether I was a homosexual
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74
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Dyson was very impressed by the clarity of Tomonagas presentation
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to meetings and spend a lot of time reading in
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00
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where
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Table 9111
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Figure 9114
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Vertex part
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Thus M
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up The difference between Feynman Schwinger
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something essential and true about the furniture of the world
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10 QED in Switzerland
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if by
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Some Reflections
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NOTES
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certain frame of reference usually one chosen so as
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Gamow G 1928 Zur Quantentheorie des Atomkernes Zeits
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Serpe J 1940 Sur le problème de la largeur
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Silvan S. Schweber is Professor of Physics and Richard Koret Professor of the History of Ideas at Brandeis University. He is also an associate in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University.

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