The European Physical Journal H最新文献

My part in the rise of the UK Nuclear Structure Facility (1975–1982) 我在英国核结构设施崛起中的角色（1975-1982）

IF 1.5 4区物理与天体物理

The European Physical Journal H Pub Date : 2026-11-04 DOI: 10.1140/epjh/s13129-026-00135-z

John F. Sharpey-Schafer

引用次数: 0

Historical perspective on measuring zero electrical resistance in condensed matter 凝聚态零电阻测量的历史展望

IF 1.5 4区物理与天体物理

The European Physical Journal H Pub Date : 2026-10-29 DOI: 10.1140/epjh/s13129-026-00136-y

Alexander C. Mark, Russell J. Hemley

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Double $beta$-decay: unveiling the early history of a rare process 双$ β $-衰变：揭示一个罕见过程的早期历史

IF 1.5 4区物理与天体物理

The European Physical Journal H Pub Date : 2026-10-26 DOI: 10.1140/epjh/s13129-026-00138-w

Elisabetta Di Grezia, Salvatore Esposito, Adele Naddeo

{"title":"Double $beta$-decay: unveiling the early history of a rare process","authors":"Elisabetta Di Grezia, Salvatore Esposito, Adele Naddeo","doi":"10.1140/epjh/s13129-026-00138-w","DOIUrl":"10.1140/epjh/s13129-026-00138-w","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Neutrinos are currently the subject of intensive theoretical and experimental investigations, devoted to looking for new evidence of physics beyond the Standard Model of elementary particles. The solution of puzzling issues such as the mass-generation mechanism, the lepton number violation, the absolute mass scale and the possible Majorana nature of neutrinos would open also new perspectives on baryogenesis and the evolution of the universe. In this respect, the observation of the rarest and elusive neutrinoless double <span>(beta )</span>-decay process is expected to play a prominent role, so that its relevance can be hardly underestimated. In the present work, we fully reconstruct the genesis and the early history of double <span>(beta )</span>-decay, starting from Maria Goeppert-Mayer’s pioneering contribution, which promptly followed the first successful theory of <span>(beta )</span>-decay provided by Enrico Fermi. Furthermore, we delve into Ettore Majorana’s neutrino theory and a variety of related investigations, finally focusing on the neutrinoless version of double <span>(beta )</span>-decay, whose existence was suggested by Wendell H. Furry in 1939 and put forward as a viable tool to discriminate between the very (Dirac or Majorana) nature of the electron neutrino.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":791,"journal":{"name":"The European Physical Journal H","volume":"51 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149338612","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Historical debates over the physical reality of the wave function 关于波函数的物理实在性的历史争论

IF 1.5 4区物理与天体物理

The European Physical Journal H Pub Date : 2026-09-29 DOI: 10.1140/epjh/s13129-026-00129-x

Jacob A. Barandes

{"title":"Historical debates over the physical reality of the wave function","authors":"Jacob A. Barandes","doi":"10.1140/epjh/s13129-026-00129-x","DOIUrl":"10.1140/epjh/s13129-026-00129-x","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This paper provides a detailed and unified historical account of early debates over wave-function realism, the modern term for the view that the wave function of quantum theory is physically real. As this paper will show, the idea of physical waves associated with particles had its roots in work by Einstein and de Broglie, who both originally thought of these waves as propagating in three-dimensional physical space. De Broglie quickly turned this wave–particle duality into an early pilot-wave theory, on which a particle’s associated “phase wave” piloted or guided the particle along its trajectory. Schrödinger built on de Broglie’s phase-wave hypothesis to provide a comprehensive account of the nascent quantum theory. However, Schrödinger’s new “undulatory mechanics” came at the cost of replacing de Broglie’s phase waves propagating in physical space with a wave function propagating in a system’s abstract configuration space. The present work will argue that this move from three-dimensional physical space to a many-dimensional configuration space was a decisive reason why the founders of quantum theory uniformly abandoned the physical reality of the wave function. This paper will further clarify that de Broglie introduced two distinct pilot-wave theories, and will then argue that it was Bohm’s rediscovery of the second of these two pilot-wave theories over two decades later, as well as Bohm’s vociferous defense of wave-function realism, that were responsible for resurrecting the idea of an ontological wave function. Finally, this paper will describe how the influence of Schrödinger and Bohm ended up playing a central role in Everett’s development of the many worlds interpretation.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":791,"journal":{"name":"The European Physical Journal H","volume":"51 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149133157","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Von Neumann, his thought experiment, his entropy, and thermodynamics 冯·诺伊曼，他的思想实验，他的熵和热力学

IF 1.5 4区物理与天体物理

The European Physical Journal H Pub Date : 2026-09-23 DOI: 10.1140/epjh/s13129-026-00132-2

Alain Deville, Yannick Deville

{"title":"Von Neumann, his thought experiment, his entropy, and thermodynamics","authors":"Alain Deville, Yannick Deville","doi":"10.1140/epjh/s13129-026-00132-2","DOIUrl":"10.1140/epjh/s13129-026-00132-2","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In quantum mechanics, the concept of entropy was introduced by von Neumann in his canonical 1932 book. More than seventy years later, a debate has developed within the Philosophy of Science community, about the relevance of a thought experiment introduced by von Neumann. This debate is presently still open, and has developed along various paths. The present paper focuses on this thought experiment. It is proposed first to respect the approach followed by von Neumann. It is then stressed that when thermodynamic arguments implying exchanges of matter between parts of the system of interest are introduced into its analysis, these exchanges should be analyzed with the right thermodynamic concept. This concept, introduced more than 140 years ago, is now called the chemical potential. In the literature discussed in the present paper, that failure to use the chemical potential concept first led to the claim of wrong thermodynamic results. A second consequence was a premature introduction of quantum measurements together with an undue rejection of the step with a thermodynamic treatment developed by von Neumann in his analysis of his experiment. The analysis of his thought experiment with phenomenological thermodynamics led von Neumann to propose that the entropy of a quantum system in a state described by the density operator <span>(rho )</span> should be <span>(-<Lnrho >=-Tr(rho Lnrho ) )</span>(or <span>( -k<Lnrho>)</span> in non-reduced units, <i>k</i>: the Boltzmann constant, <i>Tr</i>: the Trace). The present paper shows that this proposal by von Neumann was right.\u0000</p></div>","PeriodicalId":791,"journal":{"name":"The European Physical Journal H","volume":"51 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149035020","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Gleb Wataghin and his mission in Brazil: a memoir 格列布·瓦塔欣和他在巴西的使命：回忆录

IF 1.5 4区物理与天体物理

The European Physical Journal H Pub Date : 2026-09-10 DOI: 10.1140/epjh/s13129-026-00133-1

Carola Dobrigkeit

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引用次数: 0

Blurred orbits and blurred particles: Heisenberg’s 1926 helium atom 模糊轨道和模糊粒子：海森堡1926年的氦原子

IF 1.5 4区物理与天体物理

The European Physical Journal H Pub Date : 2026-09-01 DOI: 10.1140/epjh/s13129-026-00127-z

Gonzalo Gimeno, Mercedes Xipell, Enric Pérez

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Using two-photon interference to perform ultrahigh-precision timing measurements: the origins of the Hong–Ou–Mandel effect 利用双光子干涉进行超高精度定时测量：洪鸥-曼德尔效应的起源

IF 1.5 4区物理与天体物理

The European Physical Journal H Pub Date : 2026-08-26 DOI: 10.1140/epjh/s13129-026-00131-3

Gautier Depambour

{"title":"Using two-photon interference to perform ultrahigh-precision timing measurements: the origins of the Hong–Ou–Mandel effect","authors":"Gautier Depambour","doi":"10.1140/epjh/s13129-026-00131-3","DOIUrl":"10.1140/epjh/s13129-026-00131-3","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In this paper, I recount the early experiments leading to the observation of the two-photon interference phenomenon commonly referred to as the “Hong–Ou–Mandel effect,” observed in 1987 at the University of Rochester by Chung Ki Hong, Zhe-Yu Ou, and Leonard Mandel, and now widely used for quantum technologies. I show that Mandel and his collaborators originally designed their experiment not to probe the nonclassical properties of radiation, as one might think, but to perform ultrahigh-precision timing measurements on photon pairs produced through a nonlinear optical process, namely spontaneous parametric down-conversion. More broadly, I argue that the Hong–Ou–Mandel experiment resulted from the convergence of three distinct lines of research: nonlinear optics, the quantum properties of radiation, and, more unexpectedly, the foundations of quantum mechanics. Within this framework, I bring to light the work of physicists whose names do not appear in the acronym “HOM,” but whose contributions proved crucial to the demonstration of two-photon interference—notably Stephen Friberg and Rupamanjari Ghosh within Mandel’s laboratory, Yanhua Shih and Carroll Alley at the University of Maryland, and John Rarity and Paul Tapster in England.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":791,"journal":{"name":"The European Physical Journal H","volume":"51 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-08-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148837461","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Neglecting non-locality: the response to EPR 忽略非局部性：对EPR的响应

IF 1.5 4区物理与天体物理

The European Physical Journal H Pub Date : 2026-08-12 DOI: 10.1140/epjh/s13129-026-00126-0

Kristian Camilleri

{"title":"Neglecting non-locality: the response to EPR","authors":"Kristian Camilleri","doi":"10.1140/epjh/s13129-026-00126-0","DOIUrl":"10.1140/epjh/s13129-026-00126-0","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The 1935 Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen (EPR) paper, “Can Quantum–Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?”, stands as a landmark in the foundational debates over quantum mechanics. While the paper has since become one of Einstein’s most cited works, it initially received little attention, and the feature of non-locality, which was central to the argument in the paper, was largely neglected for decades. In this paper, I offer two reasons for this early neglect of non-locality in the immediate aftermath of EPR. First, early responses to the EPR paper defended the completeness of quantum mechanics by reformulating the thought experiment the authors had presented, thereby obscuring the feature of quantum mechanics the authors had wished to highlight. Bohr’s influential reply, for instance, substituted the specific thought experiment presented by EPR with the two-slit experiment, thus suppressing the entanglement between spatially separated systems. A second reason for the marginalization of non-locality was the tendency to see Einstein’s critique of quantum mechanics as proceeding from a commitment to determinism, though this in fact played no role in the EPR paper or in his later writings and correspondence. This paper argues that the failure to recognize non-locality was partly a result of the rhetorical manoeuvring by EPR’s critics, but also to a broader philosophical climate dominated by concerns over determinism, which effectively eclipsed all other conceptual issues, Only with Bell’s theorem in the 1960s did non-locality return as a serious focus of foundational inquiry.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":791,"journal":{"name":"The European Physical Journal H","volume":"51 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1140/epjh/s13129-026-00126-0.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148751946","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

The tropical year and the problem of its approximation in Julian-derived calendars: a physical and historical inquiry into the structure of astronomical time 儒略历中的回归年及其近似问题：对天文时间结构的物理和历史研究

IF 1.5 4区物理与天体物理

The European Physical Journal H Pub Date : 2026-08-10 DOI: 10.1140/epjh/s13129-026-00125-1

Vladan Kuzmanović

{"title":"The tropical year and the problem of its approximation in Julian-derived calendars: a physical and historical inquiry into the structure of astronomical time","authors":"Vladan Kuzmanović","doi":"10.1140/epjh/s13129-026-00125-1","DOIUrl":"10.1140/epjh/s13129-026-00125-1","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The determination of the tropical year constitutes a fundamental problem at the intersection of celestial mechanics, astronomy, and historical timekeeping. As a physically defined quantity arising from the combined effects of orbital motion and axial precession, the tropical year provides the natural reference for civil calendar systems. This study examines the historical development of Julian-derived calendars as successive approximations to the tropical year, interpreted within a unified physical and mathematical framework. From the Julian calendar through the Gregorian reform to the Revised Julian system of Milutin Milanković, these calendars are analyzed as rational approximations to a slowly varying astronomical quantity. Within this framework, an adjusted Julian scheme is introduced as a theoretical extension of this tradition. Rather than constituting a proposal for reform, it serves to elucidate the limiting behavior of fixed calendrical systems when applied to a time-dependent physical quantity. The analysis demonstrates that calendar design is inherently epoch-dependent and reflects a continuous interaction between physical theory, mathematical structure, and historical practice. The results contribute to the understanding of timekeeping as a physical as well as cultural problem.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":791,"journal":{"name":"The European Physical Journal H","volume":"51 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-08-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148751408","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0