Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Prologue
- 2 Introduction to Elementary Quantum Mechanics and Stability of the First Kind
- 3 Many-Particle Systems and Stability of the Second Kind
- 4 Lieb–Thirring and Related Inequalities
- 5 Electrostatic Inequalities
- 6 An Estimation of the Indirect Part of the Coulomb Energy
- 7 Stability of Non-Relativistic Matter
- 8 Stability of Relativistic Matter
- 9 Magnetic Fields and the Pauli Operator
- 10 The Dirac Operator and the Brown–Ravenhall Model
- 11 Quantized Electromagnetic Fields and Stability of Matter
- 12 The Ionization Problem, and the Dependence of the Energy on N and M Separately
- 13 Gravitational Stability of White Dwarfs and Neutron Stars
- 14 The Thermodynamic Limit for Coulomb Systems
- List of Symbols
- Bibliography
- Index
Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 December 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Prologue
- 2 Introduction to Elementary Quantum Mechanics and Stability of the First Kind
- 3 Many-Particle Systems and Stability of the Second Kind
- 4 Lieb–Thirring and Related Inequalities
- 5 Electrostatic Inequalities
- 6 An Estimation of the Indirect Part of the Coulomb Energy
- 7 Stability of Non-Relativistic Matter
- 8 Stability of Relativistic Matter
- 9 Magnetic Fields and the Pauli Operator
- 10 The Dirac Operator and the Brown–Ravenhall Model
- 11 Quantized Electromagnetic Fields and Stability of Matter
- 12 The Ionization Problem, and the Dependence of the Energy on N and M Separately
- 13 Gravitational Stability of White Dwarfs and Neutron Stars
- 14 The Thermodynamic Limit for Coulomb Systems
- List of Symbols
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The fundamental theory that underlies the physicist's description of the material world is quantum mechanics – specifically Erwin Schrödinger's 1926 formulation of the theory. This theory also brought with it an emphasis on certain fields of mathematical analysis, e.g., Hilbert space theory, spectral analysis, differential equations, etc., which, in turn, encouraged the development of parts of pure mathematics.
Despite the great success of quantum mechanics in explaining details of the structure of atoms, molecules (including the complicated molecules beloved of organic chemists and the pharmaceutical industry, and so essential to life) and macroscopic objects like transistors, it took 41 years before the most fundamental question of all was resolved: Why doesn't the collection of negatively charged electrons and positively charged nuclei, which are the basic constituents of the theory, implode into a minuscule mass of amorphous matter thousands of times denser than the material normally seen in our world? Even today hardly any physics textbook discusses, or even raises this question, even though the basic conclusion of stability is subtle and not easily derived using the elementary means available to the usual physics student. There is a tendency among many physicists to regard this type of question as uninteresting because it is not easily reducible to a quantitative one.
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- Information
- The Stability of Matter in Quantum Mechanics , pp. xiii - xviPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009