Early Quantum Electrodynamics

'Professor Miller has produced yet another remarkable book in the history of modern physics. … This book should provide a valuable resource for an extended history and philosophical analysis of quantum field theory.' James T. Cushing, Centaurus

• Preface; Notes to the Preface; Acknowledgements; Notes to the Reader; 1. From quantum mechanics toward quantum electrodynamics; 1.1. Niels Bohr's atomic theory, 1913–23; 1.2. The coupling mechanism; 1.3. Virtual oscillators; 1.4. Quantum mechanics versus wave mechanics; 1.5. Intrinsic symmetry; 1.6. Transformation theory and word meanings; 1.7. The uncertainty principle paper; 1.8. Complementarity; 1.9. Conclusion; 2. Second quantization; 2.1. Jordan's 1926 results; 2.2. Dirac's quantization of the electromagnetic field; 2.3. Jordan's quantization of bosons and fermions; 2.4. Jordan and Pauli's relativistic quantization of charge-free electromagnetic fields; 3. Photons and relativistic electrons; 3.1. The Dirac equation; 3.2. Heisenberg and Pauli on quantum electrodynamics, 1929; 3.3. The electron's mass in classical and quantum electrodynamics; 3.4. From negative energy states to positrons; 4. Quantum electrodynamics; 4.1. Measurement problems in a quantum theory of the electromagnetic field; 4.2. Heisenberg's first attempt at a fundamental length; 4.3. An 'intuitive' time-dependent perturbation theory; 4.4. Multiple-time theory, hole theory and second quantization; 4.5. Dirac at Solvay in 1933: vacuum polarization; 4.6. The Heisenberg-Pauli collaboration on positron theory; 4.7. The subtraction physics; 4.7.1. Dirac defines the problem; 4.7.2. Weisskopf's calculation of the electron's self-energy in hole theory; 4.7.3. Beyond the correspondence principle; 4.7.4. Heisenberg's formulation of subtraction physics; 4.7.5. Some reactions to Heisenberg; 4.8. Quantization of the Klein–Gordon equation: the Pauli–Weisskopf statistics.