Notes on the theory of radiation

Abstract

It will probably be agreed that among all the recent developments of the quantum theory, one of the least satisfactory is the theory of radiation. The present paper is intended as a preliminary to a new line of attack on the subject. It was begun some time ago, but owing to lack of success in carrying it to a conclusion, its publication has been much delayed. In the meantime other papers have appeared, which in some respects follow the same train of thought. The authors of these works have carried their methods further in some directions than I have attempted, but there is still perhaps room for the discussion of a number of questions from the rather different point of view adopted here. 1. The main principle of the present work is the idea that, since matter and light both possess the dual characters of particle and wave, a similar mathematical treatment ought to be applied to both, and that this has not yet bee done as fully as should be possible. Whereas we have a fairly complete calculus for dealing with the behaviour of any number of electrons or atoms, for photons the existing processes are much less satisfactory. The central difficulty, which makes it hard to apply the ordinary methods of wave mechanics to light, is the fact that (at least according to our present ideas) photons can be created and annihilated, and to represent this in a wave system we have to be able to think of a medium suddenly coming into existence and then going out again, when the light that it was carrying is absorbed. Such behaviour is a grave difficulty in the way of allowing us to think of the photon as a wave, and tends to make us think with more favour of its particle aspect, until we recall that after all it is quite unlike any known particle to come into existence and later to disappear without trace. The theories at present current, such as that of Heisenberg and Pauli, avoid these difficulties because they are mainly formal generalisations of the classical theory; this frees them from the above difficulties, but they pay for it in being highly abstract, and, as it has turned out, rather unsuccessful.