DOCSLIB.ORG

Bolles E.B. Einstein Defiant.. Genius Versus Genius in the Quantum

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Bolles E.B. Einstein Defiant.. Genius Versus Genius in the Quantum Selected other titles by Edmund Blair Bolles The Ice Finders: How a Poet, a Professor, and a Politician Discovered the Ice Age A Second Way of Knowing: The Riddle of Human Perception Remembering and Forgetting: Inquiries into the Nature of Memory So Much to Say: How to Help Your Child Learn Galileo’s Commandment: An Anthology of Great Science Writing (editor) Edmund Blair Bolles Joseph Henry Press Washington, DC Joseph Henry Press • 500 Fifth Street, NW • Washington, DC 20001 The Joseph Henry Press, an imprint of the National Academies Press, was created with the goal of making books on science, technology, and health more widely available to professionals and the public. Joseph Henry was one of the founders of the National Academy of Sciences and a leader in early American science. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this volume are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Academy of Sciences or its affiliated institutions. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bolles, Edmund Blair, 1942- Einstein defiant : genius versus genius in the quantum revolution / by Edmund Blair Bolles. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-309-08998-0 (hbk.) 1. Quantum theory—History—20th century. 2. Physics—Europe—History— 20th century. 3. Einstein, Albert, 1879-1955. 4. Bohr, Niels Henrik David, 1885-1962. I. Title. QC173.98.B65 2004 530.12′09—dc22 2003023735 Copyright 2004 by Edmund Blair Bolles. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. To Kelso Walker and the rest of the crew, volunteers all. Tanzania XII: U.S. Peace Corps, 1966-1968 Bohr asked me to sit down and soon started to pace furiously around the oblong table in the center of the room. He then asked me if I could note down a few sentences as they emerged during his pacing. Bohr never had a full sentence ready. He would often dwell on one word, coax it, implore it, to find the continuation. This could go on for several minutes. At that moment the word was ‘Einstein’. There was Bohr, almost running around the table and repeating: ‘Einstein . Einstein . .’. After a little while he walked to the window, gazed out, repeating every now and then: ‘Einstein . Einstein . .’. —Abraham Pais, Niels Bohr’s Times Contents A RADICAL FACT RESISTED 1 The Opposite of an Intriguer 3 2 Not German at All 12 3 I Never Fully Understood It 26 4 Independence and Inner Freedom 35 5 A Mercy of Fate 51 6 Picturesque Phrases 57 7 Scientific Dada 68 8 Such a Devil of a Fellow 76 9 Intuition and Inspiration 86 10 Bold, Not to Say Reckless 94 11 A Completely New Lesson 102 12 Slaves to Time and Space 110 13 Where All Weaker Imaginations Wither 116 14 A Triumph of Einstein Over Bohr 127 A RADICAL THEORY CREATED 15 Something Deeply Hidden 137 16 Completely Solved 146 17 Exciting and Exacting Times 162 vii viii CONTENTS 18 Intellectual Drunkenness 184 19 The Observant Executrix 195 20 It Might Look Crazy 204 21 Taking Nothing Solemnly 211 22 How Much More Gratifying 218 A RADICAL UNDERSTANDING DEFIED 23 Sorcerer's Multiplication 229 24 Adding Two Nonsenses 236 25 Admiration and Suspicion 241 26 An Unrelenting Fanatic 248 27 The Secret of the Old One 251 28 Indeterminacy 256 29 A Very Pleasant Talk 264 30 The Dream of His Life 276 31 The Saddest Chapter 285 32 A Reality Independent of Man 291 33 A Certain Unreasonableness 299 Afterword 305 Bibliography 309 Sources 317 Index 337 Part I A Radical Fact Resisted 1 The Opposite of an Intriguer n 1918 Albert Einstein’s face did not yet capture the living union I of tragedy with genius. His hair had yet to shoot crazily from his broad, serious brow, and his eyes did not yet laugh and x-ray at the same time. He was still decades away from sticking out his tongue at a camera. Instead, photos from that period show a man not quite 40 years old who seemed firmly settled into middle age. His hair had gone gray; his eyes had lost some sparkle that had been evident in pictures taken only four years earlier. Anybody who saw him the day he rode a tram to the Reichstag probably took him to be just one more exhausted burgher looking for food in a starving city. Outside Einstein’s tram window, Berlin was cracking open like Humpty Dumpty. Until recently people had thought the Great War was going well. The Russians had surrendered and the Kaiser’s troops along the western front had again begun to advance toward Paris. “Victory all along the line” had been the watchword, and then sud- denly World War I was over. Germany cried uncle and the whole imperial system collapsed like a handsome marionette whose puppe- teer has been felled by a stroke. One flinch and down it went. There had still been some dreamers. The industrialist Walther Rathenau had wept when the war began, but now he appealed to the people to “rise in defense of their nation.” The generals knew such 3 4 EINSTEIN DEFIANT pleas were hopeless and ignored him. Germany’s navy mutinied; sol- diers on the Russian front had been radicalized by Bolshevik propa- ganda, while masses of troops on the western front began deserting. The police had disappeared from sight. Rumor alone was in charge. Max Wertheimer also rode aboard Einstein’s tram. Remarkably, he looked younger than he had back in 1914. The Kaiser’s army had forced him to shave off his great black beard and take on a soldier’s air. Wertheimer, a Czech-born Jew, was Prussian in neither outlook nor manner, but he had served Germany ably enough to win an Iron Cross. Einstein had been among the war’s strongest opponents and shocked even other pacifists with his treasonable opinions that favored Germany’s outright defeat. Yet the beardless soldier and the long-haired peacemonger were good friends, united by a common delight in ideas. Both men knew what it was like to be seized by a notion and not to rest until the puzzle was resolved. Once, in 1910, Wertheimer had been riding a train when he suddenly had a new idea. Descending at the next station, he checked into a hotel and began experimenting. A week later he emerged with the blueprint for what came to be known as Gestalt psychology. Then he boarded another train and continued his journey. That had happened a world ago, before rumor had gained com- mand, before a whisper had been force enough to remove the Kaiser from his throne. In a desperate effort to stop a revolution, the emperor’s chancellor had said in a telegram that “the Kaiser and King has re- solved to renounce the throne.” It was a lie. The Kaiser still dithered about whether to resign or stand firm, but such indecision did not matter once Berlin’s streets heard about the telegram. The Kaiser was finished. He fled his capital, lucky to have avoided the last tsar’s fate. The German throne took its great fall. The architect Walter Gropius was on furlough from the Italian front and saw a Berlin crowd insult- ing officers. This is more than just a lost war, he told himself, a world has come to an end. The city that Einstein saw rushing by his streetcar window was paying the monstrous price of having lived on a tangle of lies. Berlin still looked whole. It had seen no enemy aircraft (as London had) and felt no artillery shells (as Paris had), yet Berlin had become a desperate, THE OPPOSITE OF AN INTRIGUER 5 starving, refugee-filled city of dismay. All that had previously seemed real had proved false as a dream. And now, adding to the torment of sudden damnation, a plague was taking liar and prophet alike. Sweep- ing around the world, the flu had arrived in town, killing 300 Berlin- ers a day and turning every little November cough into a reason for terror. Einstein was bound for Berlin’s revolutionary center. When news spread about the emperor’s supposed abdication, a crowd assembled outside the Reichstag and demanded to see Germany’s leading social- ist politicians, who, just then, were surviving the Allied blockade by dining on watery soup. Eventually a politician strolled out to the Reichstag balcony and pronounced a few words, “The old and the rotten,” he shouted to the crowd that strained to catch his speech, “the monarchy has collapsed. Long live the new!” Then, getting carried away, he added, “Long live the German Republic!” There was a cheer and the politician returned to his soup. Until that moment, the plan had been to create a new, constitutional monarchy with the emperor’s grandson as the new king, but somebody had said republic and that was enough smoke and mirror for there to be no more German kings. A third man rode the tram to the Reichstag with Einstein and Wertheimer. This was Einstein’s colleague in physics, Max Born, and he had a cough. Born had been in bed when Einstein telephoned him to report the latest crisis, that revolutionary students had seized the university and were holding some professors and its rector hostage. Einstein thought he might have some influence with the students and asked for Born’s support. So faithful Max Born had left his bed and now Einstein, Born, and Wertheimer were riding toward the parlia- ment to see what they could do to rescue the hostages.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Chao-Dyn/9402001 7 Feb 94
    chao-dyn/9402001 7 Feb 94 DESY ISSN Quantum Chaos January Einsteins Problem of The study of quantum chaos in complex systems constitutes a very fascinating and active branch of presentday physics chemistry and mathematics It is not wellknown however that this eld of research was initiated by a question rst p osed by Einstein during a talk delivered in Berlin on May concerning Quantum Chaos the relation b etween classical and quantum mechanics of strongly chaotic systems This seems historically almost imp ossible since quantum mechanics was not yet invented and the phenomenon of chaos was hardly acknowledged by physicists in While we are celebrating the seventyfth anniversary of our alma mater the Frank Steiner Hamburgische Universitat which was inaugurated on May it is interesting to have a lo ok up on the situation in physics in those days Most I I Institut f urTheoretische Physik UniversitatHamburg physicists will probably characterize that time as the age of the old quantum Lurup er Chaussee D Hamburg Germany theory which started with Planck in and was dominated then by Bohrs ingenious but paradoxical mo del of the atom and the BohrSommerfeld quanti zation rules for simple quantum systems Some will asso ciate those years with Einsteins greatest contribution the creation of general relativity culminating in the generally covariant form of the eld equations of gravitation which were found by Einstein in the year and indep endently by the mathematician Hilb ert at the same time In his talk in May Einstein studied the
    [Show full text]
  • Front Matter
    Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-88508-9 - New Directions in Linear Acoustics and Vibration: Quantum Chaos, Random Matrix Theory, and Complexity Edited by Matthew Wright and Richard Weaver Frontmatter More information NEW DIRECTIONS IN LINEAR ACOUSTICS AND VIBRATION The field of acoustics is of immense industrial and scientific importance. The subject is built on the foundations of linear acoustics, which is widely re- garded as so mature that it is fully encapsulated in the physics texts of the 1950s. This view was changed by developments in physics such as the study of quantum chaos. Developments in physics throughout the last four decades, often equally applicable to both quantum and linear acoustic problems but overwhelmingly more often expressed in the language of the former, have explored this. There is a significant new amount of theory that can be used to address problems in linear acoustics and vibration, but only a small amount of reported work does so. This book is an attempt to bridge the gap be- tween theoreticians and practitioners, as well as the gap between quantum and acoustic. Tutorial chapters provide introductions to each of the major aspects of the physical theory and are written using the appropriate termi- nology of the acoustical community. The book will act as a quick-start guide to the new methods while providing a wide-ranging introduction to the phys- ical concepts. Matthew Wright is a senior lecturer in Acoustics at the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research (ISVR). His B.Eng. was in engineering acoustics and vibration, and his Ph.D.
    [Show full text]
  • Geometry of Chaos
    Part I Geometry of chaos e start out with a recapitulation of the basic notions of dynamics. Our aim is narrow; we keep the exposition focused on prerequisites to the applications to W be developed in this text. We assume that the reader is familiar with dynamics on the level of the introductory texts mentioned in remark 1.1, and concentrate here on developing intuition about what a dynamical system can do. It will be a broad stroke description, since describing all possible behaviors of dynamical systems is beyond human ken. While for a novice there is no shortcut through this lengthy detour, a sophisticated traveler might bravely skip this well-trodden territory and embark upon the journey at chapter 18. The fate has handed you a law of nature. What are you to do with it? 1. Define your dynamical system (M; f ): the space M of its possible states, and the law f t of their evolution in time. 2. Pin it down locally–is there anything about it that is stationary? Try to determine its equilibria / fixed points (chapter2). 3. Cut across it, represent as a return map from a section to a section (chapter3). 4. Explore the neighborhood by linearizing the flow; check the linear stability of its equilibria / fixed points, their stability eigen-directions (chapters4 and5). 5. Does your system have a symmetry? If so, you must use it (chapters 10 to 12). Slice & dice it (chapter 13). 6. Go global: train by partitioning the state space of 1-dimensional maps. Label the regions by symbolic dynamics (chapter 14).
    [Show full text]
  • Chaos: Classical and Quantum Volume II: Semiclassicalchaos Chapter 31
    Chaos: Classical and Quantum Volume II: SemiclassicalChaos Chapter 31 Prologue Anyone who uses words “quantum” and “chaos” in the same sentence should be hung by his thumbs on a tree in the park behind the Niels Bohr Institute. —Joseph Ford (G. Vattay, G. Tanner and P. Cvitanovi´c) ou have read the first volume of this book. So far, so good – anyone can play a game of classical pinball, and a skilled neuroscientist can poke Y rat brains. We learned that information about chaotic dynamics can be obtained by calculating spectra of linear operators such as the evolution operator of sect. 17.2 or the associated partial differential equations such as the Liouville equation (16.37). The spectra of these operators can be expressed in terms of periodic orbits of the deterministic dynamics by means of trace formulas and cycle expansions. But what happens quantum mechanically, i.e., if we scatter waves rather than point-like pinballs? Can we turn the problem round and study linear PDE’s in terms of the underlying deterministic dynamics? And, is there a link between structures in the spectrum or the eigenfunctions of a PDE and the dynamical properties of the underlying classical flow? The answer is yes, but ... things Predrag Cvitanovic´ – Roberto Artuso – Per Dahlqvist – Ronnie Mainieri – are becoming somewhat more complicated when studying 2nd or higher order Gregor Tanner – Gabor´ Vattay – Niall Whelan – Andreas Wirzba linear PDE’s. We can find classical dynamics associated with a linear PDE, just take geometric optics as a familiar example. Propagation of light follows a second order wave equation but may in certain limits be well described in terms of geometric rays.
    [Show full text]
  • Autumn 2008 Newsletter of the Department of Mathematics at the University of Washington
    AUTUMN 2008 NEWSLETTER OF THE DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON Mathematics NEWS 1 DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS NEWS MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR When I first came to UW twenty-six Association, whose first congress will take place in Sydney years ago, the region was struggling during the summer of 2009, and a scientific exchange with with an economic downturn. Our France’s CNRS. region has since turned into a hub of These activities bring mathematicians to our area; math- the software industry, while program- ematicians who come to one institution visit other insti- ming has become an integral part tutions, start collaborations with faculty, and return for of our culture. Our department has future visits. They provide motivation, research experiences, benefited in many ways. For instance, support, contacts and career options to our students. Taken the Theory Group and the Cryptog- together, these factors have contributed significantly to our raphy Group at Microsoft Research are home to a number department’s accomplishments during the past decade. of outstanding mathematicians who are affiliate faculty members in our department; the permanent members and With this newsletter we look back on another exciting postdoctoral fellows of these groups are engaged in fruitful and productive year for the department. A record number collaborations with faculty and graduate students. of Mathematics degrees were awarded, for example. The awards won by the department’s faculty and students dur- More recently, there has been a scientific explosion in the ing the past twelve months include the UW Freshman Medal life sciences, the physical manifestations of which are ap- (Chad Klumb), the UW Junior Medal (Ting-You Wang), a parent to anyone who drives from UW to Seattle Center Goldwater Fellowship (Nate Bottman), a Marshall Scholar- along Lake Union.
    [Show full text]
  • Quantum Chaos
    archived as http://www.stealthskater.com/Documents/Math_02.doc [pdf] more of this topic at http://www.stealthskater.com/Science.htm note: because important websites are frequently "here today but gone tomorrow", the following was archived from http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=quantum-chaos-subatomic-worlds on October 28, 2008. This is NOT an attempt to divert readers from the aforementioned website. Indeed, the reader should only read this back-up copy if the updated original cannot be found at the original author's site. Quantum Chaos What would classical chaos, which lurks everywhere in our world, do to quantum mechanics, the theory describing the atomic and subatomic worlds? by Martin Gutzwiller / Scientific American [Editor's Note: This feature was originally published in our January 1992 Scientific American issue. We are posting it because of recent discussions [reprinted below] of the connections between Chaos and Quantum Mechanics.] In 1917, Albert Einstein wrote a paper that was completely ignored for 40 years. In it, he raised a question that physicists have only, recently begun asking themselves. What would classical Chaos (which lurks everywhere in our world) do to Quantum Mechanics (the theory describing the atomic and subatomic worlds)? The effects of classical Chaos, of course, have long been observed. Kepler knew about the motion of the Moon around the Earth and Newton complained bitterly about the phenomenon. At the end of the 19th Century, the American astronomer William Hill demonstrated that the irregularity is the result entirely of the gravitational pull of the Sun. So thereafter, the great French mathematician-astronomer- physicist Henri Poincaré surmised that the Moon's motion is only mild case of a congenital disease affecting nearly everything.
    [Show full text]
  • September 29, 2015 NAME: Yannis G. Kevrekidis DATE of BIRTH
    September 29, 2015 NAME: Yannis G. Kevrekidis DATE OF BIRTH: March 26, 1959, Athens, Greece NATIONALITY: dual U.S. and Greek citizenship ADDRESS: 215 Hartley Ave. PHONE: (609) 258-2818 (Office) Princeton, N.J. 08540 (609) 921-8521 (Home) DEGREES: Dipl. Chem. Eng., N.T.U. Athens, 1982 MA, Mathematics, U. of Minnesota, 1986 PhD, Chemical Engineering, U. of Minnesota, 1986 Thesis Advisors: Rutherford Aris and Lanny Schmidt Thesis:On the Dynamics of Chemical Reactions and Reactors ACADEMIC POSITIONS: Pomeroy and Betty Perry Smith Professor of Engineering Princeton University, February 2007 (Professor of Chemical Engineering Summer 1994-present, Associate Professor Summer 1991 - Spring 1994, Assistant Professor, Fall 1986 - Spring 1991) Senior Faculty, Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics, Princeton University, Summer 1994 - present (Associated Faculty Fall 1987 - Spring 1993) Associated Faculty, Department of Mathematics, Princeton University, Winter 2002-present Director's Post-Doctoral Fellow, Center for Nonlinear Studies and Theoretical Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Fall 1985 - Summer 1986 Visiting Rothschild Distinguished Visitor, Isaac Newton Institute, Cambridge, Summer 2016 Hans Fischer Senior Fellow, EEC and T.U. Muenchen, Fall 2015 Microsoft Visitor, Isaac Newton Institute, Cambridge University, Summer 2013 Gutzwiller Fellow, Max Planck fur Physik Komplexer Systeme, Dresden, 2010-2011 Control and Dynamical Systems (Moore Scholar), Caltech, Fall 2005 Professeur Invite, Ecole Normale Superieure, November 2005 O. A. Hougen Visiting Professor, University of Wisconsin, Fall 2002 Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Patras, 1999 Stanislaw Ulam Visiting Scholar, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Fall 1994 - Summer 1995 Visiting Associate Professor, Applied Mathematics, University of Colorado, Boulder, Fall 1991. Summer 1996 - Spring 1998: Researcher A, (Part-Time, every summer), I.T.E., Patras, Greece.
    [Show full text]
  • On the Minkowski Measure
    ON THE MINKOWSKI MEASURE LINAS VEPŠTAS <[email protected]> ABSTRACT. The Minkowski Question Mark function relates the continued-fraction rep- resentation of the real numbers to their binary expansion. This function is peculiar in many ways; one is that its derivative is ’singular’. One can show by classical techniques that its derivative must vanish on all rationals. Since the Question Mark itself is contin- uous, one concludes that the derivative must be non-zero on the irrationals, and is thus a discontinuous-everywhere function. This derivative is the subject of this essay. Various results are presented here: First, a simple but formal measure-theoretic con- struction of the derivative is given, making it clear that it has a very concrete existence as a Lebesgue-Stieltjes measure, and thus is safe to manipulate in various familiar ways. Next, an exact result is given, expressing the measure as an infinite product of piece-wise contin- uous functions, with each piece being a Möbius transform of the form (ax + b)=(cx + d). This construction is then shown to be the Haar measure of a certain transfer operator. A general proof is given that any transfer operator can be understood to be nothing more nor less than a push-forward on a Banach space; such push-forwards induce an invariant measure, the Haar measure, of which the Minkowski measure can serve as a prototypi- cal example. Some minor notes pertaining to it’s relation to the Gauss-Kuzmin-Wirsing operator are made. 1. INTRODUCTION The Minkowski Question Mark function was introduced by Hermann Minkowski in 1904 as a continuous mapping from the quadratic irrationals to the rational numbers[23].
    [Show full text]
  • Semiclassical Quantization 696
    CHAPTER 38. SEMICLASSICAL QUANTIZATION 696 Figure 38.1: A returning trajectory in the configura- tion space. The orbit is periodic in the full phase space only if the initial and the final momenta of a returning trajectory coincide as well. Chapter 38 Figure 38.2: A romanticized sketch of S p(E) = S (q, q, E) = p(q, E)dq landscape orbit. Unstable periodic orbitsH traverse isolated ridges and saddles of Semiclassical quantization the mountainous landscape of the action S (qk, q⊥, E). Along a periodic orbit S p(E) is constant; in the trans- verse directions it generically changes quadratically. (G. Vattay, G. Tanner and P. Cvitanovi´c) so the trace receives contributions only from those long classical trajectories which are periodic in the full phase space. e derive here the Gutzwiller trace formula and the semiclassical zeta func- For a periodic orbit the natural coordinate system is the intrinsic one, with qk tion, the central results of the semiclassical quantization of classically axis pointing in theq ˙ direction along the orbit, and q⊥, the rest of the coordinates W chaotic systems. In chapter 39 we will rederive these formulas for the transverse toq ˙. The jth periodic orbit contribution to the trace of the semiclassical case of scattering in open systems. Quintessential wave mechanics effects such as Green’s function in the intrinsic coordinates is creeping, diffraction and tunneling will be taken up in chapter 42. 1 dqk d−1 j 1/2 i S − iπ m tr G (E) = d q |det D | e ~ j 2 j , j (d−1)/2 ⊥ ⊥ i~(2π~) I j q˙ Z j 38.1 Trace formula where the integration in qk goes from 0 to L j, the geometric length of small tube around the orbit in the configuration space.
    [Show full text]
  • APS Announces Spring 2002 Prize and Award Recipients
    SpringPrizes and 2002Awards APS Announces Spring 2002 Prize and Award Recipients Thirty-seven APS prizes and ception of the Brookhaven Relativistic Mumbai, India. Jain’s most important con- Schwarz received his awards will be presented during spe- Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). tribution has been his introduction of Ph.D. in 1966 from U.C. cial sessions at three spring meetings electron-flux combinations called “compos- Berkeley. He joined ite fermions”. Jain has extended and Princeton University as a of the Society: the 2001 March Meet- 2002 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS ing, 12-16 March, in Seattle, WA; the developed the theory of composite fermi- junior faculty member in PRIZE ons into several directions, in particular, 1966. In 1972 he moved to 2001 April Meeting, April 28 - May 1, Carlos Bustamente toward extracting detailed quantitative infor- Caltech, where he has re- in Washington, DC; and the 2001 meet- mation which can be compared with exact mained ever since. Schwarz has worked ing of the APS Division of Atomic, University of California, Berkeley results as well as experiment. on superstring theory for almost his en- Molecular and Optical Physics, May tire professional career. In 1984 Michael Citation: “For his pioneering work in single Read received his Ph.D. 15-19, in London, Ontario, Canada. Ci- Green and he discovered an anomaly can- molecule biophysics and the elucidation of the for work in Condensed tations and biographical information cellation mechanism, which resulted in fundamental physics principles underlying the Matter Theory in 1986 for each recipient follow. Additional string theory becoming one of the hottest mechanical properties and forces involved in from Imperial College, areas in theoretical physics.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction to Quantum Chaos
    INTRODUCTION TO QUANTUM CHAOS Denis Ullmo1 and Steven Tomsovic2 1LPTMS, Univ Paris-Sud, CNRS UMR 8626, 91405 Orsay Cedex, France 2Department of Physics and Astronomy, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164-2814 USA July 17, 2014 Keywords: quantum chaos, random matrix theory, spectral statistics, Gutzwiller trace for- mula, periodic orbit theory, kicked rotor, diamagnetic hydrogen, Coulomb blockade, orbital magnetism. Contents 1 Introduction 3 2 Background context and history 4 2.1 Chaos . 4 2.2 Quantum Mechanics . 6 2.3 Correspondence Principle & Quantum Chaos . 7 3 The kicked rotor 8 3.1 The classical rotor . 9 3.2 The quantum rotor . 9 3.3 Classical emergence . 12 4 Semiclassical description of chaotic systems 12 4.1 Bohr-Sommerfeld quantization rule . 13 4.2 Gutzwiller trace formula . 14 4.3 Orbit proliferation and convergence issues . 14 4.4 Breaking the mean level spacing scale . 15 5 Random Matrix Theory 17 5.1 Spectral statistics . 18 5.2 Random Matrix Ensembles . 19 5.3 Quantum chaos and Random matrices . 21 6 Physical applications 23 6.1 The Hydrogen atom in a strong magnetic field . 24 6.2 Coulomb Blockade in a ballistic quantum dot . 28 6.3 Orbital magnetism of mesoscopic rings or dots . 30 7 Conclusion 32 1 Summary The authors provide a pedagogical review of the subject of Quantum Chaos. The subject's origins date to the debut of the twentieth century when it was realized by Einstein that Bohr's Old Quantum Theory could not apply to chaotic systems. A century later, the issues arising in trying to understand the quantum mechanics of chaotic systems are actively under research.
    [Show full text]
  • History of Science Society’S Most Valued Functions
    ISSN 0739-4934 Newsletter HISTORY OF SCIENCE VOLUME 35 NUMBER 3 July 2006 SOCIETY Force Equals Mass Times Acceleration: What You Think: HSS Publications and Services Give This Great Body a Push rants for graduate student travel, on-line access to a bibliographical data base, Gthe new “Focus” sections in Isis, and a responsive Executive Office - these are among the History of Science Society’s most valued functions. According to a recent survey, members want HSS core functions, such as our publications and the annu- al meeting, kept in orbit, and new ones launched. You have, for example, conveyed to us ideas for supporting new-comers to the field, speaking more accessibly and meaningfully to each other and to those outside the discipline, and fulfilling the potential of our international character. The enthusiasm manifested for the field and the Society, along with the profusion of positive suggestions for the future, assured a delighted Executive Committee that HSS has the commitment and ener- gy to enhance significantly what it does for its members and the history of science. The online survey is one way individual members are participating in shap- ing the future of the Society and the discipline. Many thanks to those who partic- ipated. (To those who did not, you will have a second chance when the Committee Reading the HSS Survey on Research and the Profession produces a more detailed survey.) We will be using the survey results, along with deliberations by the Council and various commit- he recent survey of HSS members represents an ongoing conversation. tees, as the basis for imagining the future of HSS.
    [Show full text]