In 1924, a young PhD student submitted a thesis containing the germ of an idea that would revolutionize our understanding of the material world. The student was Louis De Broglie, and for a while, he had been meditating on the wave/particle nature of light. De Broglie’s ideas were greeted rather sceptically at first. His PhD supervisor even asked for a second copy so he could send it to Einstein for his opinion. Einstein gave the work his seal of approval. News of De Broglie’s thesis spread around the physics community from 1924 to 1925. In autumn 1925, Erwin Schrodinger was visiting colleagues in Switzerland and was asked to present a summary of De Broglie’s work. Having studied De Broglie’s thesis in some detail he became an enthusiastic supporter. During the Christmas and New Year of 1925/1926, Schrodinger holidayed in the Alps with his mistress. On his return, he had a functioning wave equation worked out.
In 1924, a young PhD student submitted a thesis containing the germ of an idea that would revolutionize our understanding of the material world. The student was Louis De Broglie, and for a while, he had been meditating on the wave/particle nature of light. De Broglie’s ideas were greeted rather sceptically at first. His PhD supervisor even asked for a second copy so he could send it to Einstein for his opinion. Einstein gave the work his seal of approval. News of De Broglie’s thesis spread around the physics community from 1924 to 1925. In autumn 1925, Erwin Schrodinger was visiting colleagues in Switzerland and was asked to present a summary of De Broglie’s work. Having studied De Broglie’s thesis in some detail he became an enthusiastic supporter. During the Christmas and New Year of 1925/1926, Schrodinger holidayed in the Alps with his mistress. On his return, he had a functioning wave equation worked out.
In 1924 a young PhD student submitted a thesis containing the germ of an idea that would revolutionize our understanding of the material world.3 e student was Louis De Broglie4 (pronounced De Broy), and for a while he had been meditating on the wave/particle nature of light. In a moment of insight he suddenly realized that the odd behavior of light might extend to other aspects of nature as well. Perhaps particles, such as electrons, could have a wavelike nature to balance the particlelike nature of light, which had been thought of as a wave. Echoing the Planck-Einstein formulas for photons, De Broglie proposed that electrons should have a ‘pilot wave’ with frequency ( f ) and wavelength (λ) given by h mv f E h His thesis also contains an explanation for Bohr’s quantized orbits in hydrogen. If an orbiting electron had a ‘corresponding’ wave, it would have to close on itself around the circular arc of the orbit. is forces the circumference of a satisfactory orbit to be a whole number multiple of the wavelength (see Figure 18.1).
Where did we get that [equation] from? Nowhere. It is not possible to derive it from anything you know. It came out of the mind of Schrödinger. Richard Feynman De Broglie's matter waves The early struggles of physicists towards a quantum theory were mostly concerned with attempts to understand the nature of light. The traditional picture of light as a wave motion had been challenged by Planck and Einstein. They had shown that certain experimental results that were impossible to understand in terms of a wave picture could be easily explained if light was thought of as a stream of particles, now called photons. William Bragg, who, with his son, won the 1915 Nobel Prize for studies of crystal structure using X-rays, summarized this dilemma for physics by exclaiming in despair that he was teaching the corpuscular theory of light on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and the undulatory theory on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays! Physicists were still wrestling with these apparently contradictory properties of light when, in 1924, Prince Louis de Broglie (pronounced ‘de Broy’) suggested that all matter, even objects that we usually think of as particles – such as electrons – should also display wavelike behaviour! This revolutionary idea was completely unexpected and, what is more, was included by de Broglie in his Ph. D. thesis. Like most people, physicists are generally reluctant to accept any wild new idea, especially if there is not a shred of evidence to support it.
On 13 March 1926, the first of six papers on wave mechanics by Erwin Schrödinger was published in the Annalen der Physik with the title Quantisation as an eigenvalue problem (Part 1) (Schrödinger, 1926b). The startling first paragraph reads: ‘In this paper, I wish to consider, first, the simple case of the hydrogen atom (nonrelativistic and unperturbed), and show that the customary quantum conditions can be replaced by another postulate, in which the concept of “whole numbers”, merely as such, is not introduced. Rather, when integralness does appear, it arises in the same natural way as it does in the case of node-numbers of a vibrating string. The new conception is capable of generalisation, and strikes, I believe, very deeply at the true nature of quantum rules.’ These papers were the fruits of an extraordinary burst of creativity on Schrödinger's part which resulted from his interactions with Einstein in the latter part of 1925. Central to these exchanges were de Broglie's remarkable researches which culminated in his famous PhD dissertation and published papers of 1924. These events have already be recounted in Chap. 9. The subsequent developments which led to Schrödinger's discovery of the equation which bears his name will be taken up in Sect. 14.2, but let us first understand more about Schrödinger's background. Schrödinger's background in physics and mathematics Education and career up to 1925 Unlike Heisenberg, Jordan, Pauli and Dirac, Erwin Schrödinger was not one of the young Turks who developed Knabenphysik , young man's physics.
When in the spring of 1926 Erwin Schrödinger set out the form of the equation for wave propagation and drew important conclusions from it, in some very elegant work which appeared to develop the ideas which I had introduced in 1923–24 (de Broglie 1924), he really profoundly modified the ideas which had guided me two years earlier in my original research. For his idea was that although the ψ wave which he was introducing was still a true physical wave propagated in space and time, it would not have any single area of high field concentration which could be a particle; whereas in my original concept I assumed that the coexistence of waves and particles, perceived by Einstein in 1905 in respect of light in his theory of light quanta, should be extended to all types of particle in the form of the coexistence of a physical wave with a particle incorporated in it.
Unpublished letters of late 1925 between Einstein and Schrödinger and the doctoral thesis of de Broglie reveal sources of Schrödinger’s inspiration to invent wave mechanics. Schrödinger saw a congenial similarity of de Broglie’s work on the stability of the atom with his own earlier speculation in relativity, which he noted to Einstein. But the last chapter of de Broglie’s thesis, on quantum statistics of gases, which is unfamiliar to many modern readers, provided Schrödinger with the method of treatment of a gas of material particles considered as a system of modes of vibration, of ’’matter waves.’’ This method especially, and other successes of de Broglie’s ’’ingenious thesis,’’ convinced Schrödinger to take seriously the first part, on the conditions of stability of the atom in a wave picture. Thus he sought and found an equation to describe the states of the electron from the matter-wave viewpoint.
The famous 1927 Solvay Conference was considered a turning point in the world of Physics. The scientific realists like Albert Einstein had lost and the instrumentalists like Niels Bohr had won the fundamental conflict. Since then Physics has followed the path of the instrumentalists in which Quantum Physics has been determined by the concept of Elementary Particles and Probability Waves. Until May 2013, when for the first time a photo had been made of the Probability Waves Inside the Hydrogen Atom . It should be impossible to make a photo of a non-existing complex probability wave with mass zero But the fact could not be denied anymore that scientists had succeeded to make the “complex” and the “non-existing” quantum mechanical “Probability Wave” visible. Since the Copenhagen Interpretation there is still no clarity about the physical interpretation of the Quantum Mechanical “Probability Wave Function”This Manuscript describes a third unknown interpretation of the Quantum Mechanical “Probability Wave Function”. A fundamental physical interpretation that will change the generally accepted Copenhagen Interpretation. This Manuscript will answer the fundamental question: Does an alternative theory exist in which the existence of this particular photo, of the Quantum Mechanical Probability Wave within the Hydrogen Atom, could be explained. And that the famous photo of the Hydrogen Atom can be explained in a logical and a simple way. To find the answer, we have to go back in time. Back 300 years in time to the moment when Isaac Newton discovered the beauty and one of the many secrets of the light. The moment when science walked away from light. And we return to the fundamental question: “Is it possible to build Matter out of Light (confined electromagnetic waves)?” To answer this question if it is possible to build Matter out of Light, we first have to answer the question how we have come to this world of Probability Waves and Elementary Particles and Quantum Physics.Louis de Broglie described in 1924 in his PhD thesis the wave properties of matter. Erwin Schrödinger published in 1926 the well-known Schrödinger wave equation with the characteristic spherical and elliptical wave solutions. To describe these material waves, the immediately and first explanation was: “There is only one possibility. These are “Electromagnetic Waves”. De Broglie Waves are ” Light Waves”. Because these were the only waves, known in the world of Physics, that could travel through vacuum. But there was a fundamental problem. These material waves, discovered by Louis de Broglie and mathematically described by Erwin Schrödinger could never be solutions of the well-known 4 linear equations of James Clerk Maxwell. The material waves were spherical and elliptical solutions of confinement and that was impossible for the solutions of the linear Maxwell Equations. According to the linear Maxwell Equations, superposition is possible but Electromagnetic Interaction and Electromagnetic Confinement can only be described by a set of non-linear differential equations. To solve this fundamental problem a new set of 3 non-linear Electromagnetic Equations (Equation 5 in this manuscript) has been developed which replaces the well-known 4 linear Maxwell Equations and the possible solutions of Equation (5) are also Spherical and Elliptical solutions of confinement. Table 1 in this manuscript presents a number of Electromagnetic Spherical Confinements as solutions of Equation 5a .A second problem was that the model of the atom of Bohr could not hold. How could an electron be everywhere at the same time in a kind of a spherical shell surrounding the nucleus. And be a particle at the same time. And Bohr found a compromise to declare the “De Broglie” waves to be the probability waves. Two problems were solved. Bohr’s planetary model could hold. And there was a name for the unknown material waves, discovered by Louis de Broglie and mathematically described by Erwin Schrödinger. The theory of “Probability Waves, Elementary Particles and Quantum Physics” had been created. To find a possibility, to create matter out of light we have to go back to the Equations of James Clerk Maxwell. The only possibility to declare the probability waves, discovered by Louis de Broglie, to be electromagnetic waves, to be light, and to be the building element of our universe, is to find evidence that he Maxwell Equations are not complete and that it is possible to confine light (electromagnetic waves) in spherical and elliptical shapes. A new equation has to be found. In this article it has been claimed that this missing equation is Equation (5). Because the Theory of General Relativity has been built on the Einstein-Maxwell Equation, a new equation has to be found that describes in a generalized way the interaction between light and matter. This missing equation is Equation (5-a).