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Chapter
3 - Photons and relativistic electrons pp. 29-40
Chapter DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511608223.005
Cambridge University Press
3
3.1
Until Dirac's electron theory, the only relativistically invariant wave equation
was that of Klein and Gordon (Gordon, 1926, and Klein, 1926).7
m2c2
(3.1)
9V
dt
h2c2\Vip\2 + m2c*\ip\2.
3 2
(3.3)
(3.4)
Whereas classical mechanics excludes negative energies as unphysical, in quantum mechanics transitions can occur between +mc2 and me2.
What most likely did motivate Dirac was the need for a relativistic equation
with a first-order time derivative in order to satisfy the quantum mechanical
transformation theory. Yet, owing to the negative energy states, Dirac, himself,
at first considered his theory to be provisional (1928). Nevertheless, the theory
had enormous initial successes (natural emergence of electron spin and correct
Sommerfeld fine structure formula).
The Dirac relativistic equation for an electron of mass m and charge \e\ is
' = 0,
(3.5)
30
representation
The ok are 2 x 2 Pauli spin matrices and / is the 2 x 2 identity matrix; the
y-matrices anticommute
{Yi*, YV} = 260^,
the particle density is
(3.7)
p=y*n>,
(3.8)
H:
) Ms )
(3.9)
(3oi>
(3.12)
So, from Eq. (3.9) the Dirac equation for an electron in an electromagnetic
field becomes
( V + eA\ + mc2B + eq\\l> = ifi \b
(3.13)
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31
son limit for light scattered by an electron emerges from the negative energy
states only (that is in the limit hu> me2, where a) is the frequency of the
incident light).8
But Heisenberg and Pauli took Dirac's work seriously enough to begin
formulating a quantum electrodynamics, that is a relativistic quantum theory
for the interaction between radiation and electrons.
Among the new results that appeared before publication of Part I of the
Heisenberg-Pauli opus (1929) are the following.
By October 1928 Klein and Y. Nishina used Dirac's equation and semiclassical
radiation theory (unquantized radiation field), along with Dirac's timedependent second-order perturbation theory to calculate the Compton effect
(including the 'physically meaningless negative energy states'; Klein and
Nishina, 1928).
By the end of December 1928 Klein (1928) completed his work on the peculiarities of electrons that are reflected at a potential step. Owing to relativistic
kinematics we have the following situation for the potential step V(x) = 0 for
x < 0 and V(x) = +P for x > 0: If P > E + m0c2 (where E is the energy of
an electron approaching from x < 0) an electron can penetrate the barrier
and emerge into x > 0 with a negative kinetic energy and with velocity
directed oppositely to its momentum. Klein concluded ominously that the
energy 'difficulty .. . can occur with purely mechanical problems where there
is no question of radiative processes'. Jokingly, Pauli referred to Klein's
results as a 'scandal' (letter of Pauli to Klein, 18 February 1929, in Pauli,
1985).9
3.2
Heisenberg and Pauli (1929) set up a theory of the interaction of light and
matter 'by considerations based on correspondence limits . . . . The correspondence-like analog to the theory attempted here will be on the one hand
Maxwell's theory and on the other hand the wave equation of the single-electron problem reinterpreted in the sense of the classical continuum theory'.
They accomplished this program by inventing a method for field quantization
to which they were guided by classical Lagrangian field theory.
(1) Write the system's Lagrangian density L as
Z. = L(v,gradV, VO,
where a labels the components of the field.
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( 3 - 14 )
32
(2)
(3)
(3.16)
(4)
(3-17)
Heisenberg and Pauli regarded the step of quantizing with either commutators
or anticommutators to be a 'well known peculiarity',10 and proceeded to do all
calculations with commutators and anticommutators. As Pauli (1985) wrote to
Klein on 18 February 1929 concerning either method of quantization, 'we
obtain not any information at all on the inner foundation of my exclusion
principle'. This quest for an 'inner foundation' was central to Pauli's thoughts
during the 1930s.
Two difficulties emerged for the first time from the Heisenberg-Pauli paper:
The first difficulty was that quantization of Maxwell's equations turned out not
to be as straightforward as they at first thought. The Lagrangian density for the
electromagnetic field without sources is
L = (B2 - E2),
(3.18)
or in terms of potentials
Since dA4/dt (= idcp/dt) does not appear in L, then its canonical momentum
n4 = 0 and the commutator
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Cambridge Books Online Cambridge University Press, 2014
33
[774, AA] = 0,
instead of (/i/i)-11
Consequently the quantization procedure failed. This was a tremendous
setback to the program. As had been the case in 1924, when he failed to solve
the Zeeman effect, and in the spring of 1925, when the old Bohr atomic physics
completely broke down with no alternative in sight, Pauli once again despaired.
In the 1924 crisis he delved into the Hamburg underground cafe culture; in
1925 he considered taking up movie directing; and in 1929 he began to write a
Utopian novel (letter to Peierls of 18 June 1929, in Pauli, 1985). Heisenberg,
however, thrived in periods of flux and resolved this difficulty.
Heisenberg's 'Kunstgriff, as Pauli referred to it to Peierls, was to add to the
Lagrangian density the term
ldf.
2
(3-20)
\dx)
which preserves gauge and relativistic invariance and also gauge invariance with
the replacement q>'a = cpa + SA/dxa, imposing on the function A the auxiliary
condition DA = 0. (Repeated Greek indices indicate summation from 1 to 4 and
repeated Latin indices mean summation from 1 to 3.) The quantity e is set
equal to zero at the end of any calculation.
In Part II of their paper, Heisenberg and Pauli (1930) removed the 'aesthetic
defect' of the E term by demonstrating that in a relativistically invariant manner
one can always choose a gauge so that cp = 0. Consequently all calculations can
be done in the Coulomb gauge without supplementary terms.
The second difficulty was that there arises an infinite self-energy term for the
electron, which is the 'interaction of the particle with itself. Heisenberg and
Pauli explored this term further by developing a perturbation method alternative to time-dependent perturbation theory. They wrote the Schrodinger equation in occupation number space by expressing the q-number electron wave
function and the electromagnetic field in creation and annihilation operators.
Schrodinger's equation thus became
(-E+
Hatom + Hrad)<P = -
ffint<D,
(3.21)
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34
where Nr is the number of electrons in the unperturbed state r, and there are
no photons in the unperturbed system of electrons. Then an iteration procedure
can commence with the additional substitution of E = Eo + E\ + E2 +
The term Ex vanishes because it is proportional to the diagonal matrix element
of //;,. E2 contains the electron's Coulomb self-energy. The 'Klein-Jordan
trick' however, does not work for the electron in the presence of an electromagnetic field because the Ak commute with the electron wave function xp.u
In Part I Heisenberg and Pauli (1929) simply discard the infinite Coulomb
self-energy as an irrelevant additive infinite constant, just like the zero-point
energy of the vacuum; neither of these effects, they wrote, 'correspond to
reality'. They omitted any physical discussion of the negative energy states,
'since these transitions [that is, transitions from +mc2 to me2] undoubtedly
do not occur in reality'.13 The negative energy states were an 'inconsistency of
the theory being presented here, which must be accepted as long as the Dirac
difficulty is unexplained'.
In the improved formulation of their quantum electrodynamics in Part II,
Heisenberg and Pauli were less sure about neglecting the infinite Coulomb
self-energy, the presence of which 'in many cases will make application of the
theory impossible'.
Despite these problems, they believed that any future theory of quantum
electrodynamics would have 'essential traits in common with the theory attempted here'. 14
It was Pauli's belief that the difficulties and shortcomings of the HeisenbergPauli formulation of quantum electrodynamics indicated that the 'natural goal
of the force and range of correspondence thinking on the basis of wave
mechanics had been reached' (letter to Peierls of 18 June 1929).
Further difficulties ensued. In a sequel paper, J. Robert Oppenheimer, who
had worked with Heisenberg and Pauli on Part II, found a new contribution to
the self-energy of the electron. By rigorously carrying out Heisenberg and
Pauli's iteration procedure from Part II of their paper, Oppenheimer (1930b)
identified another self-energy for the bound electron, which led to the false
prediction of infinite displacements of energy levels and which could not be
disregarded merely as an irrelevant infinite additive constant.15 Like Heisenberg and Pauli, Oppenheimer discarded the infinite Coulomb self-energy.
Oppenheimer's calculation was redone more directly and clearly by Ivar
Waller (1930b), who demonstrated that, for free electrons moving with momentum p, second-order perturbation theory gives an additional divergence to the
electron's self-energy that has a leading term
W(p)~hjo kdk
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(3.23)
35
\{B2 - E2)dV,
(3.24)
E and B are the electron's self-electric and self-magnetic fields and the integral
is carried out over the volume of the electron. The electron's momentum is
deduced from Eq. (3.24) by the usual Lagrangian methods (G e = dL/dv) with
certain assumptions on the electron's constitution and charge distribution.
To complete the deduction of the electron's mass requires recourse to Newton's second law
F e + F ext = moa,
(3.25)
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36
where the resultant force on the electron is the sum of the external forces F ext
and the self-electromagnetic force Fe, which is the Lorentz force
Fe =\p\E + x
flW,
(3.26)
(3-30)
r0c2
where r0 is the electron's radius (of the order of 10 ~15 m), and certain numerical factors have been omitted from Eq. (3.30) which are essential to a complete historical analysis of the electron's electromagnetic mass (see Miller,
1981). The quantity oc-i can be written as
a2 = e2/c3.
Then
e2
(3.31)
d
da
e2 d
^=j>
c J Ts
(3-32)
rocl Tl
dt
where d is the distance over which the electron accelerates from velocity v\ to
velocity v2 during a time interval T. In order for a2da/dt ocxa, from Eq.
(3.32) it follows that
"Vl.
T
(3-33)
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37
Consequently the condition for truncating the series in Eq. (3.29) at the first
term is that the time interval T over which the electron is accelerated from
velocity v\ to velocity v2 exceeds the time for light to traverse the electron's
radius. This is the approximation of quasi-stationary motion, which permitted
Abraham and Lorentz to calculate the electromagnetic mass by assuming that
the electron's self-fields were those for a charge moving with a uniform velocity
that happens to be the electron's instantaneous velocity. Consequently the time
rate of change of the momentum calculated from Lagrangian methods could be
set equal to [ie, which is the velocity-dependent electromagnetic mass of the
electron.
However, Poincar6 demonstrated in his classical papers of (1905) and (1906)
that the electromagnetic world-picture as originally conceived cannot be carried
through in a Lorentz covariant manner. The reason is that the energy and
momentum of a particle, with mass deduced from the Lagrangian in Eq. (3.24),
do not transform properly under Lorentz transformation. The supplementary
forces necessary to rectify this problem serve also to hold Lorentz's deformable
electron together so that it does not explode from the enormous Coulomb
repulsions between its constituent parts. (Abraham's theory of a rigid sphere
electron could not be made Lorentz covariant. For a detailed historical account
of the electromagnetic world-picture see Miller, 1981.)
For Abraham, Lorentz and Poincare' there was no self-energy problem because they assumed a finite radius for the electron. But such is not the case in
quantum electrodynamics, which deals with point electrons because the concept
of electron radius is ambiguous in quantum mechanics and also spoils Lorentz
invariance. As Heitler (1936) put it in the first edition of his book, which is
essentially a handbook for calculations, 'In the present state of the theory
[which deals with point charges] the only way to proceed is to ignore this self
energy entirely' (emphasis in original).
Let us further compare the classical theory of the electron with quantum
electrodynamics. For this purpose we assume that the electron can be represented by a charged oscillator. Then from Eq. (3.33) the expansion in Eq.
(3.29) can be expressed in terms of the parameter
j)
1,
(3-34)
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38
is not the case because the contribution to the electron's self-energy from
second-order perturbation theory diverges. From Eq. (3.34) the cutoff for
divergent integrals is
tnc
(3.35)
hv
= 137 me2.
a
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3.4
39
(3.36)
Dirac proposed that the finite measured charge density p should be interpreted
'as the departure from the normal state of electrification in the world'.
Oppenheimer (1930a) went on to show that the transition probability for
annihilation of an electron by a proton is 'absurdly large' and leads to an
'absurdly short mean life for matter' of 10~9 s.
In light of Oppenheimer's result and Weyl's proof in (1931) that negative and
positive energy electrons must have the same mass, Dirac (1931) rethought the
concept of holes. In a tone reminiscent of that of Hermann Minkowski in 1908,
Dirac wrote that branches of mathematics thought to be 'purely fictions of the
mind' have turned out to be essential for a 'description of the physical world',
for example, non-Euclidean geometries and noncommutative algebra. The key
problems of that time in theoretical physics, such as the relativistic formulation
of quantum mechanics, would probably require 'a more drastic revision of our
fundamental concepts than any that have gone before'. Most likely, he thought,
the best way to advance was to apply the 'resources of pure mathematics' to
perfect and generalize the existing formulation of theoretical physics and then
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Cambridge Books Online Cambridge University Press, 2014
40
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