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IARJSET

The Dual Nature of Matter and the Uncertainty Principle Led the Quantum Theory to Wave Mechanics

V.C.A. NAIR Dr.(Prof.)

Published Dec 30, 2017• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The paper begins with a brief account of classical theory of radiation and its failure to explain black body radiation.It is followed by the introduction of Quantum Theory of radiation by Max Planck.The dual nature of matter by de Broglie has been extensively dealt with.The uncertainty principle of Heisenberg has been critically discussed by many eminent authors who finally concluded it as one of the unavoidable mysteries of nature.As a picture speaks thousand words and as face is the index of the mind, the author has added pictures of eminent physicists at appropriate places.The subject matter of the paper will form a good text for any graduate students of Physics.

DOI
10.17148/iarjset.2017.41206

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The paper begins with a brief account of classical theory of radiation and its failure to explain black body radiation.It is followed by the introduction of Quantum Theory of radiation by Max Planck.The dual nature of matter by de Broglie has been extensively dealt with.The uncertainty principle of Heisenberg has been critically discussed by many eminent authors who finally concluded it as one of the unavoidable mysteries of nature.As a picture speaks thousand words and as face is the index of the mind, the author has added pictures of eminent physicists at appropriate places.The subject matter of the paper will form a good text for any graduate students of Physics.
Light occupies a special position in our attempts to understand nature both classically and quantum mechanically. We recall that Newton, who made so many fundamental contributions to optics, championed a particle description of light and was not favorably disposed to the wave picture of light. However, the beautiful unification of electricity and magnetism achieved by Maxwell clearly showed that light was properly understood as the wave-like undulations of electric and magnetic fields propagating through space. The central role of light in marking the frontiers of physics continues on into the twentieth century with the ultraviolet catastrophe associated with black-body radiation on the one hand and the photoelectric effect on the other. Indeed, it was here that the era of quantum mechanics was initiated with Planck's introduction of the quantum of action that was necessary to explain the black-body radiation spectrum. The extension of these ideas led Einstein to explain the photoelectric effect, and to introduce the photon concept. It was, however, left to Dirac to combine the wave-and particlelike aspects of light so that the radiation field is capable of explaining all interference phenomena and yet shows the excitation of a specific atom located along a wave front absorbing one photon of energy. In this chapter, following Dirac, we associate each mode of the radiation field with a quantized simple harmonic oscillator, this is the essence of the quantum theory of radiation.
Abstract This chapter examines some crucial experiments and basic principles of quantum mechanics that have strongly influenced the development of quantum theory in its modern form: starting from Planck’s law of black-body radiation and its derivation using the quantization of energy; Einstein’s photon hypothesis for the puzzle presented by the photoelectric effect and its test via the Millikan experiment; the Compton effect; Bohr’s theses for the structure of the hydrogen atom and the complementarity of waves and particles i.e., the wave-particle duality, culminating in de Broglie’s ideas for matter waves and their confirmation in the Davisson-Germer experiment for electron diffraction from a crystal; Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle for position and momentum as well as for energy an time; the famous double-slit experiment and Born’s probability interpretation, and finally the provocative thought experiment of Schrödinger’s cat
Abstract With the failure of classical physics to explain the experimentally observed black body radiation spectrum, the photoelectric effect and the existence of narrow spectral lines in the light emitted by excited atoms, physicists were forced to reach out for new ideas. Following Planck’s initial “drastic hypothesis” of light “quanta”, Einstein led the way in exploring some of the myriad implications of this idea. In particular, the study of fluctuations led to a new understanding of the interaction of electromagnetic radiation with atoms. Einstein invented the photon by showing, through fluctuation studies, that light emitted by atoms must be in the form of plane waves. These ideas led to the first notions regarding the quantization of matter and its dynamics.
Newtonian mechanics is the foundation of Classical Physics. Newton’s mechanics, Thermodynamics, Wave theory of Optics and Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory belong to regime of Classical Physics and can be used to explain a wide range of phenomena in the Universe at macroscopic scale. These theories fail spectacularly when applied to phenomenain the atomic and nuclear regime, for example, proton-atom scattering or the flow of electrons in a semiconductor. Quantum mechanics is the most successful scientific theory that has ever been created and it has completely changed our view of the world. The failure of Classical Physics was highlighted by black body radiation and photoelectric effect. Max Planck and Albert Einstein provided explanations of both phenomena based on quantum hypothesis and are thus considered founders of Quantum Physics. The origin of quantum mechanics goes back to the mid-1920s.It was formulated first as matrix mechanics by Werner Heisenberg, Max Born and Pascual Jordan; then as wave mechanics by Louis de Broglie and Erwin Schrödinger; and later on asquantum statistics of subatomic particles by Fermi-Dirac and Bose-Einstein. Combining relativistic mechanics with quantum mechanics, Dirac formulated his relativistic quantum mechanics during 1930s. Uncertainty Principle is thecornerstone of Quantum Physics. The role of randomness in microscopic physical processes shatters the myth that the universe is deterministic. Quantum world is unpredictable in the classical sense and demolishes the idea of an objective universe. The Copenhagen interpretation remains the quantum mechanical formalism that is currently most widely accepted amongst physicists.Quantum theories support cosmic spirit pervading the cosmos and inter – relationship of individuals in the world society. Quantum philosophy is holistic and is going to revolutionize our world-view.
Duality (Dual Nature) is a universal character of our life in this Universe. There is an analogy of dual nature of radiation and matter in the domain of Indian Philosophy and Sikh religion, where Ultimate Reality is revealed to exist in its dual nature as sarguna and nirguna Brahman. The concept of Dual Nature of radiation has been in existence since the historical times but it was Max Planck who introduced it on firm footing to explain black body radiation spectrum. Louis de Broglie proposed the concept of dual nature of matter in 1924 in his doctoral thesis. It was established during investigations of Photoelectric effect and Compton effect. The real break-through in interpreting dual nature of matter and radiation may be ascribed to the advent of Quantum Mechanics. It was observed that in the microscopic world of particles, classical concepts of wave and particle fail to justify the experimental investigations; hence there is a need to invoke quantum concepts.
This chapter presents the basic physical ideas that underpin the quantum theory. Historians place the beginnings of the quantum theory at 1900. That year Max Planck published his famous formula for the distribution of energy as a function of frequency in black-body radiation. Curiously, although radiation theory gave birth to quantum mechanics, the interaction of matter and electromagnetic radiation is a rather advanced topic in quantum mechanics and it took almost fifty years for an acceptable formulation to be achieved. One reason for this is that photons are quanta of the electromagnetic field, and the quantum theory of fields requires a relativistic treatment to be entirely successful. The corpuscular nature of light was only half of the input that gave birth to quantum mechanics. The other half concerns matter. Given that the discreteness of photons manifests itself during the emission and absorption process, it is not surprising to find that quantum oddities afflict the behaviour of material particles too.