کد مقاله کد نشریه سال انتشار مقاله انگلیسی نسخه تمام متن
1161708 1490451 2009 11 صفحه PDF دانلود رایگان
عنوان انگلیسی مقاله ISI
The emergence of selection rules and their encounter with group theory, 1913–1927
موضوعات مرتبط
مهندسی و علوم پایه فیزیک و نجوم فیزیک و نجوم (عمومی)
پیش نمایش صفحه اول مقاله
The emergence of selection rules and their encounter with group theory, 1913–1927
چکیده انگلیسی

In today's quantum mechanics and quantum field theory, the observable signature of a symmetry is often sought in the form of a selection rule: a missing radiation frequency, a particle that does not decay in another one, a scattering process which fails to take place. The connection between selection rules and symmetries is effected thanks to the mathematical discipline of group theory. In the present paper, I will offer an overview of how the productive synergy between selection rules and group theory came to be. The first half of the work will be devoted to the emergence of the idea of spectroscopic selection rules in the context of the old quantum theory, showing how this notion was linked with an interpretive scheme of theoretical nature which, once combined with group theory, would bear many fruits. In the second part of the paper, I will focus on the actual encounter between selection rules and group theory, and on the person largely responsible for it: Eugene Wigner. I will attempt to reconstruct the path which led Wigner, of all people, to be the agent effecting this connection.

ناشر
Database: Elsevier - ScienceDirect (ساینس دایرکت)
Journal: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics - Volume 40, Issue 4, December 2009, Pages 327–337
نویسندگان
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