The Search for the Gentle Tremble
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Hendrik Antoon Lorentz's Struggle with Quantum Theory A. J
Hendrik Antoon Lorentz’s struggle with quantum theory A. J. Kox Archive for History of Exact Sciences ISSN 0003-9519 Volume 67 Number 2 Arch. Hist. Exact Sci. (2013) 67:149-170 DOI 10.1007/s00407-012-0107-8 1 23 Your article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution license which allows users to read, copy, distribute and make derivative works, as long as the author of the original work is cited. You may self- archive this article on your own website, an institutional repository or funder’s repository and make it publicly available immediately. 1 23 Arch. Hist. Exact Sci. (2013) 67:149–170 DOI 10.1007/s00407-012-0107-8 Hendrik Antoon Lorentz’s struggle with quantum theory A. J. Kox Received: 15 June 2012 / Published online: 24 July 2012 © The Author(s) 2012. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract A historical overview is given of the contributions of Hendrik Antoon Lorentz in quantum theory. Although especially his early work is valuable, the main importance of Lorentz’s work lies in the conceptual clarifications he provided and in his critique of the foundations of quantum theory. 1 Introduction The Dutch physicist Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (1853–1928) is generally viewed as an icon of classical, nineteenth-century physics—indeed, as one of the last masters of that era. Thus, it may come as a bit of a surprise that he also made important contribu- tions to quantum theory, the quintessential non-classical twentieth-century develop- ment in physics. The importance of Lorentz’s work lies not so much in his concrete contributions to the actual physics—although some of his early work was ground- breaking—but rather in the conceptual clarifications he provided and his critique of the foundations and interpretations of the new ideas. -
Einstein's Mistakes
Einstein’s Mistakes Einstein was the greatest genius of the Twentieth Century, but his discoveries were blighted with mistakes. The Human Failing of Genius. 1 PART 1 An evaluation of the man Here, Einstein grows up, his thinking evolves, and many quotations from him are listed. Albert Einstein (1879-1955) Einstein at 14 Einstein at 26 Einstein at 42 3 Albert Einstein (1879-1955) Einstein at age 61 (1940) 4 Albert Einstein (1879-1955) Born in Ulm, Swabian region of Southern Germany. From a Jewish merchant family. Had a sister Maja. Family rejected Jewish customs. Did not inherit any mathematical talent. Inherited stubbornness, Inherited a roguish sense of humor, An inclination to mysticism, And a habit of grüblen or protracted, agonizing “brooding” over whatever was on its mind. Leading to the thought experiment. 5 Portrait in 1947 – age 68, and his habit of agonizing brooding over whatever was on its mind. He was in Princeton, NJ, USA. 6 Einstein the mystic •“Everyone who is seriously involved in pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe, one that is vastly superior to that of man..” •“When I assess a theory, I ask myself, if I was God, would I have arranged the universe that way?” •His roguish sense of humor was always there. •When asked what will be his reactions to observational evidence against the bending of light predicted by his general theory of relativity, he said: •”Then I would feel sorry for the Good Lord. The theory is correct anyway.” 7 Einstein: Mathematics •More quotations from Einstein: •“How it is possible that mathematics, a product of human thought that is independent of experience, fits so excellently the objects of physical reality?” •Questions asked by many people and Einstein: •“Is God a mathematician?” •His conclusion: •“ The Lord is cunning, but not malicious.” 8 Einstein the Stubborn Mystic “What interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world” Some broadcasters expunged the comment from the soundtrack because they thought it was blasphemous. -
Wolfgang Pauli Niels Bohr Paul Dirac Max Planck Richard Feynman
Wolfgang Pauli Niels Bohr Paul Dirac Max Planck Richard Feynman Louis de Broglie Norman Ramsey Willis Lamb Otto Stern Werner Heisenberg Walther Gerlach Ernest Rutherford Satyendranath Bose Max Born Erwin Schrödinger Eugene Wigner Arnold Sommerfeld Julian Schwinger David Bohm Enrico Fermi Albert Einstein Where discovery meets practice Center for Integrated Quantum Science and Technology IQ ST in Baden-Württemberg . Introduction “But I do not wish to be forced into abandoning strict These two quotes by Albert Einstein not only express his well more securely, develop new types of computer or construct highly causality without having defended it quite differently known aversion to quantum theory, they also come from two quite accurate measuring equipment. than I have so far. The idea that an electron exposed to a different periods of his life. The first is from a letter dated 19 April Thus quantum theory extends beyond the field of physics into other 1924 to Max Born regarding the latter’s statistical interpretation of areas, e.g. mathematics, engineering, chemistry, and even biology. beam freely chooses the moment and direction in which quantum mechanics. The second is from Einstein’s last lecture as Let us look at a few examples which illustrate this. The field of crypt it wants to move is unbearable to me. If that is the case, part of a series of classes by the American physicist John Archibald ography uses number theory, which constitutes a subdiscipline of then I would rather be a cobbler or a casino employee Wheeler in 1954 at Princeton. pure mathematics. Producing a quantum computer with new types than a physicist.” The realization that, in the quantum world, objects only exist when of gates on the basis of the superposition principle from quantum they are measured – and this is what is behind the moon/mouse mechanics requires the involvement of engineering. -
25 Years of Quantum Hall Effect
S´eminaire Poincar´e2 (2004) 1 – 16 S´eminaire Poincar´e 25 Years of Quantum Hall Effect (QHE) A Personal View on the Discovery, Physics and Applications of this Quantum Effect Klaus von Klitzing Max-Planck-Institut f¨ur Festk¨orperforschung Heisenbergstr. 1 D-70569 Stuttgart Germany 1 Historical Aspects The birthday of the quantum Hall effect (QHE) can be fixed very accurately. It was the night of the 4th to the 5th of February 1980 at around 2 a.m. during an experiment at the High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Grenoble. The research topic included the characterization of the electronic transport of silicon field effect transistors. How can one improve the mobility of these devices? Which scattering processes (surface roughness, interface charges, impurities etc.) dominate the motion of the electrons in the very thin layer of only a few nanometers at the interface between silicon and silicon dioxide? For this research, Dr. Dorda (Siemens AG) and Dr. Pepper (Plessey Company) provided specially designed devices (Hall devices) as shown in Fig.1, which allow direct measurements of the resistivity tensor. Figure 1: Typical silicon MOSFET device used for measurements of the xx- and xy-components of the resistivity tensor. For a fixed source-drain current between the contacts S and D, the potential drops between the probes P − P and H − H are directly proportional to the resistivities ρxx and ρxy. A positive gate voltage increases the carrier density below the gate. For the experiments, low temperatures (typically 4.2 K) were used in order to suppress dis- turbing scattering processes originating from electron-phonon interactions. -
CV Klaus Von Klitzing
Curriculum Vitae Professor Dr. Klaus von Klitzing Name: Klaus von Klitzing Born: 28 June 1943 Major Scientific Interests: Solid State Research, Experimental Solid Physics, Low Dimensional Electron Systems, Quantum Hall Effect Nobel Prize in Physics 1985 Academic and Professional Career since 1985 Director at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research and Honorary Professor at Stuttgart University, Germany 1980 - 1984 Professor at the Technical University Munich, Germany 1978 Habilitation 1972 Ph.D. in Physics 1969 - 1980 University of Würzburg, Germany 1962 - 1969 Diploma in Physics Technical University Braunschweig, Germany Functions in Scientific Societies and Committees (Selection) 2011 Scientific Advisory Board Graphene Flagship 2008 Scientific Committee Bayer Climate Award Nationale Akademie der Wissenschaften Leopoldina www.leopoldina.org 1 2007 EURAMET Research Council 2006 Board of Trustees “Institute of Advanced Studies” of TUM 2005 Jury Member START-Wittgenstein Program Austria 2005 Scientific Committee International Solvay Institutes 2000 NTT - Basic Research Laboratory Advisory Board 1992 Bord of Trustees of the German Museum Munich, Germany 1989 Bord of Trustees of the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt Braunschweig Honours and Awarded Memberships (Selection) 2019 Member of Orden Pour le Mérite 2012 TUM Distinguished Affiliated Professor 2011 Honorary Degree of the National University of Mongolia 2011 Honorary Degree of the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 2010 Honorary Member of the Deutsche Hochschulverband -
Joseph Weber's Contribution to Gravitational Waves and Neutrinos
Firenze University Press www.fupress.com/substantia Historical Article New Astronomical Observations: Joseph Weber’s Contribution to Gravitational Waves Citation: S. Gottardo (2017) New Astronomical Observations: Joseph and Neutrinos Detection Weber’s Contribution to Gravitational Waves and Neutrinos Detection. Sub- stantia 1(1): 61-67. doi: 10.13128/Sub- stantia-13 Stefano Gottardo Copyright: © 2017 S. Gottardo.This European Laboratory for Nonlinear Spectroscopy (LENS), 50019 Sesto Fiorentino (Flor- is an open access, peer-reviewed arti- ence), Italy cle published by Firenze University E-mail: [email protected] Press (http://www.fupress.com/substan- tia) and distribuited under distributed under the terms of the Creative Com- Abstract. Joseph Weber, form Maryland University, was a pioneer in the experimen- mons Attribution License, which per- tal research of gravitational waves and neutrinos. Today these two techniques are very mits unrestricted use, distribution, and promising for astronomical observation, since will allow to observe astrophysical phe- reproduction in any medium, provided nomena under a new light. We review here almost 30 years of Weber’s career spent the original author and source are on gravity waves and neutrinos; Weber’s experimental results were strongly criticized credited. by the international community, but his research, despite critics, boosted the brand Data Availability Statement: All rel- new (in mid-sixties of last century) research field of gravity waves to become one of evant data are within the paper and its the most important in XXI century. On neutrino side, he found an unorthodox way Supporting Information files. to reduce the size of detectors typically huge and he claimed to observe neutrinos flux with a small pure crystal of sapphire. -
Essays on Einstein's Science And
MAX-PLANCK-INSTITUT FÜR WISSENSCHAFTSGESCHICHTE Max Planck Institute for the History of Science PREPRINT 63 (1997) Giuseppe Castagnetti, Hubert Goenner, Jürgen Renn, Tilman Sauer, and Britta Scheideler Foundation in Disarray: Essays on Einstein’s Science and Politics in the Berlin Years ISSN 0948-9444 PREFACE This collection of essays is based on a series of talks given at the Boston Colloquium for Philosophy of Science, March 3 – 4, 1997, under the title “Einstein in Berlin: The First Ten Years.“ The meeting was organized by the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University and the Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, and co-sponsored by the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. Although the three essays do not directly build upon one another, we have nevertheless decided to present them in a single preprint for two reasons. First, they result from a project that grew out of an earlier cooperation inaugurated by the Berlin Working Group “Albert Einstein.“ This group was part of the research center “Development and Socialization“ under the direction of Wolfgang Edel- stein at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Education.1 The Berlin Working Group, directed by Peter Damerow and Jürgen Renn, was sponsored by the Senate of Berlin. Its aim was to pursue research on Einstein in Berlin with particular attention to the relation between his science and its context. The research activities of the Working Group are now being continued at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science partly, in cooperation with Michel Janssen, John Norton, and John Stachel. -
Max Planck Society's Careful Planning Reaps Benefits
briefing Within the east German research insti- “We were not treated unfairly, according tutes of the Leibniz Society, three-quarters of to western rules,” he says. “But the rules were institute directors, and over a third of depart- ost see the against us. For example, the selection process ment heads, come from west Germany. The West German was in English, whereas we could have done directors of the three new national research M better in Russian, and publication record was centres are west Germans, and 55 per cent of ‘takeover’ as having a major criterion, whereas we had had few department heads are from west Germany chances to publish in western journals.” with a further eight per cent coming from been inevitable There were also cultural differences. “We abroad. all spoke German, yet after 40 years of cultur- Even more extreme ratios exist in the 20 peared for the good of east Germany’s scien- al divide it was hard to really talk to each Max Planck institutes, with only three of the tific future, he says. At his own Institute for other,” says Horst Franz Kern, dean of sci- 240 institute directors and department Plant Biochemistry, from which he retired as ence at the University of Marburg, who heads being east Germans. In contrast to director at the end of 1997, “even those hired chaired the Wissenschaftsrat’s committee on universities and other research organiza- on temporary grant money come increas- biology and medicine at the time of the tions, 40 per cent of these top jobs are occu- ingly from west Germany”. -
Klaus Von Klitzing 1985 NOBEL PRIZE in PHYSICS Yoseph Imry, Tel Aviv (School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel Aviv University)
europhysics BULLETIN OF THE EUROPEAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY news J.A. Volume 16 Number 11/12 November/December 1985 Klaus von Klitzing 1985 NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSICS Yoseph Imry, Tel Aviv (School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel Aviv University) An October 16, 1985, the Swedish meanwhile been surpassed by an order Academy of Sciences announced the of magnitude and the result was found award of the 1985 Nobel Prize in Physics to be universal — independent of mate to Klaus von Klitzing of the Max-Planck rial and sample properties. The plateaux Institute in Stuttgart, for the discovery were also observed by Kawaji and of the Quantized Hall Effect (QHE). The Wakabayashi 2). QHE was reported in 1980 in a paper1) Besides its sheer beauty, this striking by von Klitzing in collaboration with G. result touches upon several topics of Dorda of Siemens and M. Pepper of fundamental interest, has important ap Cambridge. As shown in Fig. 1, the Hall plications to precision measurements Klaus von Klitzing now aged 42 began his conductance Gxy of a 2D electron gas in and metrology, has motivated and will physics studies at the Technical University an MOS was found, for finite ranges of undoubtedly lead to novel develop in Braunschweig and then in 1972 moved to the gate voltage in which the regular ments. Moreover, it relies on the physics the University of Wurzburg gaining his Habi conductance, Gxx, was severely reduc of devices of great industrial interest 3). litation in 1978 after spending a period at the ed, to be quantized with plateaux having Before explaining the effect briefly University of Oxford. -
LIGO's Unsung Heroes : Nature News & Comment
NATURE | NEWS LIGO's unsung heroes Nature highlights just a few of the people who played a crucial part in the discovery of gravitational waves — but didn’t win the Nobel Prize. Davide Castelvecchi 09 October 2017 Corrected: 19 October 2017 Joe McNally/Getty LIGO hunts gravitational waves with the help of two laser interferometers — and hundreds of people. Expand Every October, the announcements of the Nobel Prizes bring with them some controversy. This year’s physics prize — in recognition of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in the United States — was less debated than most. The three winners — Kip Thorne and Barry Barish, both at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, and Rainer Weiss at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge — had attracted near-universal praise for their roles in the project’s success. But the award has still put into stark relief the difficulty of singling out just a few individuals from the large collaborations of today’s 'Big Science'. The LIGO collaboration uses two giant laser interferometers to listen for deformations in space-time caused by some of the Universe’s most cataclysmic events. Physicists detected their first gravitational waves — interpreted as being produced by the collision of two black holes more than a billion years ago — in September 2015. The resulting paper, published in February 20161, has a mind-boggling 1,004 authors. Some of those are members of the LIGO Laboratory, the Caltech–MIT consortium that manages LIGO’s two interferometers in Louisiana and Washington State. But the list also includes the larger LIGO Scientific Collaboration: researchers from 18 countries, some of which — such as Germany and the United Kingdom — have made crucial contributions to the detectors. -
A Brief History of Gravitational Waves
Review A Brief History of Gravitational Waves Jorge L. Cervantes-Cota 1, Salvador Galindo-Uribarri 1 and George F. Smoot 2,3,4,* 1 Department of Physics, National Institute for Nuclear Research, Km 36.5 Carretera Mexico-Toluca, Ocoyoacac, Mexico State C.P.52750, Mexico; [email protected] (J.L.C.-C.); [email protected] (S.G.-U.) 2 Helmut and Ana Pao Sohmen Professor at Large, Institute for Advanced Study, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, 999077 Kowloon, Hong Kong, China. 3 Université Sorbonne Paris Cité, Laboratoire APC-PCCP, Université Paris Diderot, 10 rue Alice Domon et Leonie Duquet 75205 Paris Cedex 13, France. 4 Department of Physics and LBNL, University of California; MS Bldg 50-5505 LBNL, 1 Cyclotron Road Berkeley, CA 94720, USA. * Correspondence: [email protected]; Tel.:+1-510-486-5505 Abstract: This review describes the discovery of gravitational waves. We recount the journey of predicting and finding those waves, since its beginning in the early twentieth century, their prediction by Einstein in 1916, theoretical and experimental blunders, efforts towards their detection, and finally the subsequent successful discovery. Keywords: gravitational waves; General Relativity; LIGO; Einstein; strong-field gravity; binary black holes 1. Introduction Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, published in November 1915, led to the prediction of the existence of gravitational waves that would be so faint and their interaction with matter so weak that Einstein himself wondered if they could ever be discovered. Even if they were detectable, Einstein also wondered if they would ever be useful enough for use in science. -
Gravitational Waves WARNING!!!!
Gravitational Waves WARNING!!!! ⚫ Terminology is treacherous! ⚫ There are gravitational waves (our topic) and there are gravity waves (a topic for a surfing class). Mix them to your peril. Gravitational waves ⚫ Movie The History ⚫ The history of gravitational waves is rocky. Einstein argued in 1916 that gravitational waves must exist – if the space-time is dynamic, there must be ripples on it. ⚫ Einstein derived the approximate formula for the gravitational waves from two orbiting bodies. ⚫ In 1922 Eddington (that one) argued that gravitational waves were not real and just a mathematical artefact. The History ⚫ In 1936 Einstein wrote a paper with Nathan Rosen reversing his original view; they concluded that all gravitational waves should collapse into black holes. ⚫ The paper was submitted to Physics Review but was returned after the referee pointed out a mistake in it. ⚫ Einstein got berserk in response, writing an angry letter to the editor and promising never to publish in Physics Review again. The History ⚫ Einstein was later persuaded by Infeld of his mistake and corrected the paper. Rosen never conceded. ⚫ In 1957 Richard Feymann (a very famous particle physicist) presented a “sticky bead” argument that convinced most people that gravitational waves are real. The Challenge ⚫ The primary challenge with gravitational waves is that in GR there is no (unambiguous) mathematical expression for its energy. ⚫ Since locally space-time is Minkowski, in the local inertial reference frame the energy of gravitational waves is zero. I.e., that energy is non-local, one cannot claim that the energy of gravitational waves is … at his location, only that the total energy is such and such.