We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Spin was introduced as part of the effort to understand the structure of atoms prior to the development of mature quantum theory. Variations of Bohr’s model described atoms in terms of three quantum numbers, roughly similar to , and
that appear when solving the Schrödinger equation in central potentials. In this context, Pauli proposed that, in each atom, there exists at most one electron for each triplet of quantum numbers. This proposal is Pauli’s famous “exclusion principle,” which we will analyze in Chapter 15.
We saw in Chapter 2 that Born’s statistical interpretation of the wave function was one of the building blocks of quantum theory. According to Born’s interpretation, the wave function of a particle at a given moment of time defined a probability density with respect to the position
. This result is generalized to state vectors of an Hilbert space and to general observables through the following procedure.
