Louis de Broglie — Matter Waves

Volodymyr Bezverkhniy, Vitaliy Bezverkhniy

Bruce R. Wheaton

Olivier Darrigol

In 1923 Louis de Broglie arrived at a shocking notion of matter waves through reasoning so forceful that Albert Einstein and a few quantum experts took it seriously. The purpose of this paper is to analyze de Broglie's discovery and to show how some of his heuristics prevented him to introduce the equation that now bears Schrödinger’s name.

Hans-Peter Boehm

Helge Kastrup, Jeffry V. Mallow A

Louis de Broglie received the Nobel Prize for his Ph.D. It is an extreme statement but not as extreme as one might think. In his 1924 doctoral dissertation, he asserted that all matter had both wave and particle properties. His thesis stemmed from Einstein's recognition that light had particle properties. Until then it was assumed, and every experiment had shown, that light was strictly a wave. With the photoelectric effect explained by Einstein, light became an example of “wave-particle duality.” Before de Broglie, it was the only example. De Broglie proposed that all matter had both wave and particle properties. De Broglie found the relationship between the two: the particle momentum was inversely proportional to the wavelength. Experimental evidence subsequently confirmed his theory, hence the Prize.