A BRIEF HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE QUANTUM MECHANICS

Classical Works which led finally to transform ideas of Classical Mechanics into Quantum Mechanics & its applications:-

1. The beginning of quantum theory was the discovery, by Max Planck, of the electromagnetic energy quanta emitted by a black body. The work was published under the title: “Über das Gesetz der Energieverteilung im Normalspektrum”2 in Annalen der Physik, 4 (1901) 553.

2.    Four years later Albert Einstein published a paper “Über die Erzeugung und Verwandlung des Lichtes betreffenden heuristischen Gesichtspunkt” in Annalen der Physik, 17 (1905) 132, in which he explained the photoelectric effect by assuming that the energy is absorbed by a metal as quanta of energy.

3.    In 1911 Ernest Rutherford discovered that atoms are composed of a massive nucleus and electrons: “The Scattering of the α and β Rays and the Structure of the Atom”, in Proceedings of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, IV55 (1911) 18.

4.    Two years later Niels Bohr introduced a planetary model of the hydrogen atom in “On the Constitution of Atoms and Molecules” in Philosophical Magazine, Series 6,vol. 26 (1913).

5.    Louis de Broglie generalized the corpuscular and wave character of any particle in his PhD thesis “Recherches sur la théorie des quanta”, Sorbonne, 1924.

6.    The first mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics was developed by Werner Heisenberg in “Über quantentheoretischen Umdeutung kinematischer und mechanischer Beziehungen”, Zeitschrift für Physik, 33 (1925) 879.

7.    Max Born and Pascual Jordan recognized matrix algebra in the formulation [in “Zur Quantenmechanik”, Zeitschrift für Physik, 34 (1925) 858] and then all three [the famous “Drei-Männer Arbeit” entitled “Zur Quantenmechanik. II.” and published in Zeitschrift für Physik, 35 (1925) 557] expounded a coherent mathematical basis for quantum mechanics.

8.    Wolfgang Pauli introduced his “two-valuedness” for the non-classical electron coordinate in “Über den Einfluss der Geschwindigkeitsabhängigkeit der Elektronenmasse auf den Zeemaneffekt”, published in Zeitschrift für Physik, 31 (1925) 373,

9.     The next year George Uhlenbeck and Samuel Goudsmit described their concept of particle spin in “Spinning Electrons and the Structure of Spectra”, Nature, 117 (1926) 264.

10.  Wolfgang Pauli published his famous exclusion principle in “Über den Zusammenhang des Abschlusses der Elektronengruppen im Atom mit der Komplexstruktur der Spektren” which appeared in Zeitschrift für Physik B, 31 (1925) 765.

11.  The series of papers by Erwin Schrödinger “Quantisierung als Eigenwertproblem” in Annalen der Physik, 79 (1926) 361 (other references in Chapter 2) was a major advance. He proposed a different mathematical formulation (from Heisenberg’s) and introduced the notion of the wave function.

12.  In the same year Max Born, in “Quantenmechanik der Stossvorgänge” which appeared in Zeitschrift für Physik, 37 (1926) 863 gave an interpretation of the wave function.

13.  The uncertainty principle was discovered byWernerHeisenberg and described in “Über den anschaulichen Inhalt der quantentheoretischen Kinematik und Mechanik”, Zeitschrift für Physik, 43 (1927) 172.

14.  Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac reported an attempt to reconcile quantum and relativity theories in a series of papers published from 1926–1928 (references in Chapter 3).

15.  Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky and Natan Rosen proposed a test (then a Gedanken or thinking-experiment, now a real one) of quantum mechanics “Can quantum-mechanical description of physical reality be considered complete?” published in Physical Review, 47 (1935) 777.

16.  Richard Feynman, Julian Schwinger and Shinichiro Tomonaga independently developed quantum electrodynamics in 1948.

17.  John Bell, in “On the Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen Paradox”, Physics, 1 (1964) 195 reported inequalities which were able to verify the very foundations of quantum mechanics.

18.  Alain Aspect, Jean Dalibard and Géard Roger in “Experimental Test of Bell’s Inequalities Using Time-Varying Analyzers”, Physical Review Letters, 49 (1982) 1804 reported measurements which violated the Bell inequality and proved the non-locality or/and (in a sense) non-reality of our world.

19.  Akira Tonomura, Junji Endo, Tsuyoshi Matsuda and Takeshi Kawasaki in “Demonstration of Single-Electron Buildup of an Interference Pattern”, American Journal of Physics, 57 (1989) 117 reported direct electron interference in a two-slit experiment.

20. Charles H. Bennett, Gilles Brassard, Claude Crépeau, Richard Jozsa, Asher Peres and William K. Wootters, in “Teleporting an unknown quantum state via dual classical and Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen channels” in Physical Review Letters, 70 (1993) 1895 designed a teleportation experiment, which has subsequently been successfully accomplished by Dik Bouwmeester, Jian-Wei Pan, Klaus Mattle, Manfred Eibl, Harald Weinfurter and Anton Zeilinger, “Experimental Quantum Teleportation” in Nature, 390 (1997) 575.