Die Reflexion von Elektronen an einem Potentialsprung nach der relativistischen Dynamik von Dirac. Offprint from Kramers' library.

Publisher Information: 1929.

Klein, Oskar (1894-1977). Die Reflexion von Elektronen an einem Potentialsprung nach der relativistischen Dynamik von Dirac. Offprint from Zeitschrift für Physik 53 (1929). 157-165pp. 229 x 156 mm. Original printed wrappers, slightly creased, light wear. Very good. H. A. Kramers’ copy, with his pencil signature on the front wrapper.

First Edition, Offprint Issue of the paper that introduced “Klein’s paradox,” which represented a major barrier to understanding the behavior of the electron in Dirac’s relativistic dynamics. “This paradox may be formulated as follows: How can an electron be confined within a nuclear potential well if, as follows from the Dirac equation of the electron, any electron of sufficiently high energy impinging upon a high and steeply rising potential barrier has a high probability of escaping simply by being transformed from a particle of positive mass into one of negative mass?” (Stuewer, p. 199). Klein’s paradox presented a quantum-mechanical objection to the notion of an electron confined within an atomic nucleus, thus exposing a critical problem in the then-accepted proton-electron model of the nucleus. The meaning of Klein’s paradox was intensely debated by Bohr and others; it “posed a serious problem of understanding in the following years, until it found a solution in the substantially new interpretation of negative-energy states in the Dirac equation as antiparticles of the electron” (Mehra & Rechenberg, Historical Development of Quantum Theory, 6, p. 311). R. Stuewer, “Niels Bohr and nuclear physics,” in A. P. French and P. J. Kennedy, eds., Niels Bohr: A Centenary Volume (1985), pp. 197-220. Wikipedia Timeline of Quantum Mechanics.

Book Id: 46048

Price: $3,500.00

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