Leon Rosenfeld and the challenge of the vanishing momentum in quantum electrodynamics

Details Leon Rosenfeld and the challenge of the vanishing momentum in quantum electrodynamics Leon Rosenfeld and the challenge of the vanishing momentum in quantum electrodynamics

2009-04-25

arxiv.org/abs/0904.3993v1

Stud.Hist.Philos.Mod.Phys.40:363-373,2009

Physics

History and Philosophy of Physics

32 pages, submitted to Proceedings of the HQ2 Conference on the History of Quantum Physics, Utrecht, 14-17 July, 2008

Scientific paper

10.1016/j.shpsb.2009.08.002

Leon Rosenfeld published in 1930 the first systematic Hamiltonian approach to Lagrangian models that possess a local gauge symmetry. The application of this formalism to theories with local internal symmetries, such as electromagnetism in interaction with charged matter fields, is valid and complete, and predates by two decades the work by Dirac and Bergmann. Although he provided a group-theoretical justification for gauge fixing procedures that had just been implemented in the first expositions of quantum electrodynamics by Heisenberg and Pauli, and also by Fermi, his contribution went largely unnoticed. This lack of impact seems to be related to a generalized disenchantment with second quantization in the 1930's and 1940's.

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