This book of essays in four parts, written over a decade and full of surprises for the breadth and variety of its subject matter. The first part is about the foundations of the quantum theory which reflects the author's many conversations with the late John Bell who persuaded him that there is still no satisfactory interpretation of the theory. The second part deals with nuclear weapons. One of the essays concerns the creation of the modern gas centrifuge which was done by German prisoners of war in the Soviet Union. The proliferation of these centrifuges was one of the issues in the spread of nuclear weapons. The third section deals with financial engineering with a profile of Louis Bachelier, the French mathematician who created it at the beginning of the 20th century. The final section deals with the Higgs boson and how it is used for generating mass. It includes a detailed article of how this mechanism works.
This book of essays in four parts, written over a decade and full of surprises for the breadth and variety of its subject matter. The first part is about the foundations of the quantum theory which reflects the author's many conversations with the late John Bell who persuaded him that there is still no satisfactory interpretation of the theory. The second part deals with nuclear weapons. One of the essays concerns the creation of the modern gas centrifuge which was done by German prisoners of war in the Soviet Union. The proliferation of these centrifuges was one of the issues in the spread of nuclear weapons. The third section deals with financial engineering with a profile of Louis Bachelier, the French mathematician who created it at the beginning of the 20th century. The final section deals with the Higgs boson and how it is used for generating mass. It includes a detailed article of how this mechanism works.
Although there are many textbooks that deal with the formal apparatus of quantum mechanics (QM) and its application to standard problems, none take into account the developments in the foundations of the subject which have taken place in the last few decades. There are specialized treatises on various aspects of the foundations of QM, but none that integrate those topics with the standard material. This book aims to remove that unfortunate dichotomy, which has divorced the practical aspects of the subject from the interpretation and broader implications of the theory.The book is intended primarily as a graduate level textbook, but it will also be of interest to physicists and philosophers who study the foundations of QM. Parts of it could be used by senior undergraduates too.
The intensive path of development of science has led not only to the compilation of a large amount of poorly systematized knowledge about nature but also to the fact that under this "cultural layer" many magnificent ideas of the luminaries of the last century were found. This primarily concerns quantum theory, which has departed from the principles of quantization of Planck–Einstein and degenerated into a formal science, which not only does not need to be understood but also is forbidden to be understood. However, starting from the Planck–Einstein spatial resonances called quanta, we get a transparent physical picture and can correct a number of theories. The foundation of this book was laid by the popular science article "Uncombed Physics and the Particle of God" (https://rusnor.org/pubs/articles/8058.htm). This is what the Higgs boson was pompously called when Higgs was awarded the Nobel Prize. This work was continued by the author in subsequent books in which the author deliberately (for self-control) tried to include only the material that had passed the examination in scientific journals. This book includes both the author's early scientific works, which identified problems in elementary basic models, and the author's latest, which gave ways to solve fundamental problems.
This is an enjoyable book by a particle physicist of some distinction, who wrote several books on the theoretical aspects of his subject. He died soon after the book was finished. This book would seem a splendid tribute to his memory. The first five chapters are an excellent introduction to quantum mechanics from the viewpoint of a particle physicist. (A solid state physicist might include some other topics.) The next three chapters give some feeling for the excitement of particle physics and describe some of the zoo of curious creatures discovered in the depths of particle accelerators, and the forces between them: strong, electromagnetic and weak. The final chapter, 'Quantum Fields', is a tour de force. The author has a light touch and a pleasant sense of humour. He does not attempt to explain everything he mentions, but he makes it very clear when he does not. These points are beautifully illustrated by the following extract from the final chapter (p 245). 'It was said above that virtual particles come into play when the real collision ingredients are all close together. In fact, virtual particles are always in play. Even a single real particle, moving along in isolation, can emit and reabsorb virtual particles over and over again. This has the effect of shifting the physical mass of the particle away from the 'bare' value that entered into the Hamiltonian. That shift inevitably turns out to be slightly infinite, and there is a whole technology for isolating and redefining away this and a few other infinities that are characteristic of renormalisable quantum field theories. But we forebear to pursue these delicacies any further here.' I particularly like 'slightly infinite'. The publisher's blurb describes this book as being suitable for popular science readers. It is not. Its level of mathematics would make it very heavy going for anyone who had not taken at least one course in mathematics at university. This is a book which can be strongly recommended as a supplementary text for undergraduates studying quantum mechanics, and also as a book for professional physicists who wish to obtain an up-to-date description and explanation of particle physics. It ought to be in every library. P Borcherds
Quantum theory is one of the great achievements of twentieth century physics. Born at the very beginning of the century, it attained a definitive form by 1932, yet continued to evolve throughout the century. Its applications remain fully a part of modern life. It should thus come as no surprise that literature on the history of quantum theory is vast, but author Robert D. Purrington approaches the story from a new angle, by examining the original physics papers and scientific studies from before the creation of quantum mechanics to how scientists think about and discuss the subject today. The Heroic Age presents for the first time a detailed but compact and manageable history of the creation of quantum theory, and shows precisely where each important idea originated. Purrington provides the history of the crucial developmental years of quantum theory with an emphasis on the literature rather than an overview of this period focusing on personalities or personal stories of the scientists involved. This book instead focuses on how the theoretical discoveries came about, when and where they were published, and how they became accepted as part of the scientific canon.
Prologue A memorial conference for John Bell, open to the public, was held at Rutgers University around 20 years ago. I gave a short talk there on Bell's views about David Bohm's “hidden variables” formulation of quantum mechanics, a version of quantum mechanics often called the de Broglie–Bohm theory or Bohmian mechanics. This theory was in fact discovered by Louis de Broglie in 1927. In 1952, it was rediscovered and developed by Bohm, who was the first to appreciate its connection to the predictions of standard quantum mechanics. I did not publish the talk. I have decided that it would be appropriate to publish a very lightly edited version of it here, in this volume devoted to the work of Bell on the foundation of quantum mechanics. One reason for doing so is that the connection between Bell and Bohm continues to be somewhat underplayed, with the strength of his advocacy of Bohmian mechanics not properly appreciated. For example, about half of the papers in Bell's collected works on the foundations of quantum mechanics deal with Bohmian mechanics. But in his fine introduction to the revised edition of this great book [1], Alain Aspect mentions this theory in only a single sentence, and parenthetically at that. For several decades after Bell proved his nonlocality theorem, based in part on Bell's inequality, it was widely claimed that Bell had shown that hidden variables – and Bohmian mechanics in particular – were impossible, that they were incompatible with the predictions of quantum mechanics. For example, the great physicist Eugene Wigner, who, unlike most of his contemporaries, was profoundly concerned with the conceptual foundations of quantum mechanics and usually wrote on the subject with great clarity and insight, has written that This [hidden variables] is an interesting idea and even though few of us were ready to accept it, it must be admitted that the truly telling argument against it was produced as late as 1965, by J. S. Bell … This appears to give a convincing argument against the hidden variables theory.