München 2019 – scientific programme

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GP: Fachverband Geschichte der Physik

GP 11: The tools of physical theory

GP 11.3: Talk

Wednesday, March 20, 2019, 15:00–15:30, HS 9

`The new conception of the postulates:' The Bohr-Kramers-Slater reformulation of the (old) quantum theory — •Daniel J Mitchell — Institüt für Theoretische Teilchenphysik und Kosmologie, RWTH Aachen, Sommerfeldstr. 16, 52074 Aachen

The so-called Bohr-Kramers-Slater (BKS) quantum theory remains the subject of conflicting interpretations among historians owing in part to the confusing ontological status of the `virtual oscillators' (VOs) and `virtual radiation' (VR) that it introduced. Are these just metaphors---semantic tools, if you will---for describing existing theoretical practice, or do they signify an alternative model to the state-transition picture of the atom? If so, should it be interpreted realistically, or merely as a classical tool for constructing phenomenological relationships between quantum-theoretical quantities? What is it about BKS that made, and continues to make, it so intractable? One reason is a failure to follow up on the main actors' pronouncements about their own work. Another is a narrow focus upon the theoretical content of the ambiguous joint BKS paper of early 1924 rather than its (albeit short-lived) development into 1925. Drawing partly upon recent scholarship on dispersion theory and the correspondence principle, I reconceptualize BKS as an extension and reformulation of Bohr's postulates of quantum theory. I then go on, in the context of the specific prohibition of causal space-time pictures, to characterise the several distinct senses in which the VR and VOs served as tools for articulating these postulates. This perspective, I argue, better represents how Bohr, Kramers, and Slater themselves perceived and pursued `BKS.'