The Genesis of Schrödinger's Mechanics

David Favrholdt

Alexander Komech

Olivier Darrigol

Alexander Komech

David B. Cook

Orientation and Outlook Probabilities: Simple Probabilities A More Careful Look at Probabilities Classical Mechanics: The Hamilton-Jacobi Equation Angular Momentum Schrodinger's Mechanics: Prelude: Particle Diffraction The Genesis of Schrodinger's Mechanics The Schrodinger Equation Identities: Momenta and Dynamical Variables Abstracting the Structure Interpretation from Applications: The Quantum Kepler Problem The Harmonic Oscillator and Fields Perturbation Theory and Epicycles Formalisms and Hidden Variables Disputes and Paradoxes: Measurement at the Microscopic Level Paradoxes Beyond Schrodinger's Mechanics?

Michel Janssen B, Anthony Duncan A

Abstract This is the second of two volumes on the genesis of quantum mechanics in the first quarter of the twentieth century. It covers the period 1923–1927. It traces how the old quantum theory of Bohr and Sommerfeld gave way to the matrix mechanics of Heisenberg and others, and to the wave mechanics of Schrödinger. It then turns to the emergence of statistical transformation theory and the Hilbert space formalism unifying these two forms of the new quantum theory. It uses the metaphor of an arch built on a scaffold to capture these developments. The volume provides detailed analyses of the classic papers of Heisenberg, Born, Jordan, Pauli, Dirac, De Broglie, Einstein, Schrödinger, von Neumann, and others, which helped to lay the foundations of modern quantum mechanics. Drawing on correspondence and later reminiscences of these authors and synthesizing much of the extensive secondary literature on the breakthrough to modern quantum mechanics in the mid-1920s, this volume presents an authoritative new account of the genesis of quantum mechanics.