On the neutrino theory of light
- 5 April 1938
- journal article
- Published by The Royal Society in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A. Mathematical and Physical Sciences
- Vol. 165 (921) , 247-271
- https://doi.org/10.1098/rspa.1938.0058
Abstract
The neutrino theory of light, developed by Jordan, Kronig and others, is based on an idea of de Broglie’s, who suggested that one should regard a photon, not as a simple system, but as composed of two elementary particles bound together in some way (de Broglie 1932, 1933, 1934). According to de Broglie these particles are to be regarded as complementary in the same sense as electrons and positrons are complementary. This idea gives a good account of the creation and annihilation of photons and allows them to obey the Bose-Einstein statistics while retaining the idea that all elementary particles obey the Fermi-Dirac statistics and possess spin angular momentum ½ ħ . As developed by de Broglie, however, the hypothesis led to the consequence that the component particles each had exactly equal energy and momentum; thus if the state of the photon is known the state of the components can be inferred. The fact that, although the representatives are symmetrical with respect to interchange of two photons, it is then nevertheless impossible for two photons to be in the same state, owing to the underlying Fermi-Dirac statistics of the components, and so the photons would to all intents and purposes themselves obey the Fermi-Dirac statistics, led Jordan to modify the hypothesis (Jordan 1935). He suggested that it is not the interaction between the neutrinos and antineutrinos that binds them together into photons, but rather the manner in which they interact with charged particles that leads to the simplified description of light in terms of photons . To account for the process usually interpreted as the emission of a photon of circular frequency ω from an atom, he proposed that one of the following two processes can occur:This publication has 2 references indexed in Scilit:
- Zur Neutrinotheorie des LichtsThe European Physical Journal A, 1935
- A message from the PresidentJournal of the A.I.E.E., 1928