A few days later, while finishing his dinner, Mr Tompkins remembered that it was the night of the professor's lecture on the structure of the atom, which he had promised to attend. But he was so fed up with his father-in-law's interminable expositions that he decided to forget the lecture and spend a comfortable evening at home. However, just as he was getting settled with his book, Maud cut off this avenue of escape by looking at the clock and remarking, gently but firmly, that it was almost time for him to leave. So, half an hour later, he found himself on a hard wooden bench in the university auditorium together with a crowd of eager young students. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ began the professor, looking at them gravely over his spectacles, ‘In my last lecture I promised to give you more details concerning the internal structure of the atom, and to explain how the peculiar features of this structure account for its physical and chemical properties. You know, of course, that atoms are no longer considered as elementary indivisible constituent parts of matter, and that this role has passed now to much smaller particles such as electrons, protons, etc.’
A few days later, while finishing his dinner, Mr Tompkins remembered that it was the night of the professor's lecture on the structure of the atom, which he had promised to attend. But he was so fed up with his father-in-law's interminable expositions that he decided to forget the lecture and spend a comfortable evening at home. However, just as he was getting settled with his book, Maud cut off this avenue of escape by looking at the clock and remarking, gently but firmly, that it was almost time for him to leave. So, half an hour later, he found himself on a hard wooden bench in the university auditorium together with a crowd of eager young students. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ began the professor, looking at them gravely over his spectacles, ‘In my last lecture I promised to give you more details concerning the internal structure of the atom, and to explain how the peculiar features of this structure account for its physical and chemical properties. You know, of course, that atoms are no longer considered as elementary indivisible constituent parts of matter, and that this role has passed now to much smaller particles such as electrons, protons, etc.’
A few days later, while finishing his dinner, Mr Tompkins remembered that it was the night of the professor's lecture on the structure of the atom, which he had promised to attend. But he was so fed up with his father-in-law's interminable expositions that he decided to forget the lecture and spend a comfortable evening at home. However, just as he was getting settled with his book, Maud cut off this avenue of escape by looking at the clock and remarking, gently but firmly, that it was almost time for him to leave. So, half an hour later, he found himself on a hard wooden bench in the university auditorium together with a crowd of eager young students. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ began the professor, looking at them gravely over his spectacles, ‘In my last lecture I promised to give you more details concerning the internal structure of the atom, and to explain how the peculiar features of this structure account for its physical and chemical properties. You know, of course, that atoms are no longer considered as elementary indivisible constituent parts of matter, and that this role has passed now to much smaller particles such as electrons, protons, etc. ‘The idea of elementary constituent particles of matter, representing the last possible step in divisibility of material bodies, dates back to the ancient Greek philosopher DEMOCRITUS who lived in the fourth century B.C. Meditating about the hidden nature of things, Democritus came to the problem of the structure of matter and was faced with the question whether or not it can exist in infinitely small portions.
EVERY atom-model that is worthy of notice was designed in view of a certain limited group of facts. That is to say, every valuable atom-model is the invention of somebody who, being acquainted with certain of the ways in which matter behaves, set himself to the devising of atoms of which an assemblage should behave like matter in those ways. Of course, it would be a most wonderful achievement to conceive atoms, of which assemblages should behave like matter in all ways; but this is too exalted an ambition for this day and generation, no man of science bothers with it. Each atom-model of the present is partially valid, not universally; and nobody can rightly appreciate any one of them, unless he knows the facts for which it was designed. I might add that he should also know the relative importance, in the world and in life, of the facts for which it was designed. But this also is too exalted an ambition; we do not know much, if anything, about the relative importance of facts sub specie aternitatis, and can hardly refrain from regarding with an especial favour the facts which happen to have been successfully explained. At all events it is clear that every account of an atom-model should be preceded by an independent account of the things it is meant to explain. For the favorite atom of these days, the atom of Rutherford and Bohr, I have provided this preliminary account of the facts in the First Part of the article. Let me give a brief outline of the most important among them, before entering upon the task of constructing an atom-model to reproduce them.
The description of the physical and chemical properties of matter is a central issue that has occupied the minds of scientists since the age of the ancient Greeks. In their route to dissect matter down to what cannot be divided any further, they coined the term atom , the indivisible . Matter became then a collection of atoms. More than twenty centuries had to pass until the development of a more precise concept of atom, thanks, amongst others, to the systematic studies of Mendeleyev and the establishment in 1869 of the periodic table of the elements (Mendeleyev, 1869). The discovery of the electron in 1897 and the first modern model of the atomic structure by Sir Joseph Thomson were soon refined by his student, Sir Ernest Rutherford, who in 1910 showed that an atom was made of a positively charged small nucleus and a number of negatively charged electrons that neutralize the nuclear charge. Much in the spirit of planetary systems, and drawing from the analogy between gravitational and electrostatic interactions, scientists in the beginning of the twentieth century built an image of the atom that consisted of a number Z of electrons – of elementary charge – e – orbiting around the nucleus of charge Ze . A number of experimental observations, though, were incompatible with this idea of orbiting electrons. In particular, according to the successful electromagnetic theory, charged electrons in orbital (radially accelerated) motion should radiate energy, thus decelerating and eventually collapsing onto the nucleus. Clearly, such a picture would imply that matter is essentially unstable, in flagrant contradiction with our everyday experience of the very existence of matter.
This is a lecture note of Professor Shuichi Tasaki. In the last part of this manuscript, SA and FB demonstrate some recent results as well. As far as SA's knowledge, regular courses were given every two years for graduate students at Waseda university, and SA attended the course twice (probably in 2005 and 2007 or in 2006 and 2008). Some topics were added in the lectures of the later year, probably Professor Tasaki modified his lectures as he was discovering new results. A similar but intensive short course was given once as at Kyoto university. SA thinks Professor Tasaki had a unique philosophy of physics, which enabled him to give very attractive lectures that unfortunately it is not possible to attend any more. In Professor Tasaki's lectures, both beautiful mathematical views and clear physical intuition were always given together, which SA believe, is quite difficult. As many people know Professor Tasaki was very strong in mathematics, but he never forgot to think of physical interpretations. Professor Tasaki was writing a lecture note of this course based on the note taken by a student of Kyoto university. Unfortunately, Prof. Tasaki passed away before he finished writing the manuscript. This lecture note is based on the incomplete Japanese note[1] and a note taken by SA at Waseda university. It seems that main stories of the lectures are the same, but Professor Tasaki gave different materials in detail, and use different notations. This manuscript mainly follows the note of SA. SA and FB decided to write this manuscript (1) to complete a note of Professor Tasaki's lectures, and (2) to give an access for non-Japanese speaker to his lecture note. However, they are slow writer, and they could not finish it before the deadline of this volume. They could finish only parts before nonequilibrium states (only some of the results will be shown in this version), and some recent results about Landauer formula and sufficient condition on interaction for the existence of unique steady states. They hope to complete the lecture note part, and upload it on Arxiv in the future.
“A naturalist, leaving the realm of direct sensory perceptions behind him with the aim of discovering more relationships, can perhaps be likened to a mountain-climber who wishes to reach the summit of the highest mountain to view the countryside stretched out before him in all its diversity. The mountain-climber must also leave the fertile populated valleys. As he ascends, he gains an ever wider view of the neighbourhood but, at the same time, the signs of life about him become less frequent. All the foregoing will have convinced people that an electron is not a point, it does not occupy a definite position in the atom, nor can it move in some orbit. In reality, everything turned out to be exactly the other way round: in the centre of the atom lies a tiny positive nucleus surrounded by a negative cloud of electrons. The atoms of various elements vary widely in nuclear mass and charge.