Niels Bohr and complementarity. An introduction.
type: Item
instance of: scholarly article
title: Niels Bohr and complementarity. An introduction.
zbMATH Open document ID: 1322.81002
DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4614-4517-3
author: Arkady Plotnitsky
published in: SpringerBriefs in Physics
publication date: 2012-07-10T00:00:00Z
review text: Complementarity is a central concept in the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. Its advent and the development of its meaning is illustrated in course of the formulation and consolidation of quantum mechanics from 1900 to 1962. A main purpose of the book is to promote a true understanding of Niels Bohr's thinking and writings which are sometimes tentative and give rise to confusion. The lifelong debates of Bohr with Albert Einstein are valuable sources to achieve this goal. Chapter 1 is an introductory overview of the entire time. Chapter 2 concerns the year 1913 when Bohr published his postulates on stationary orbits of the electron in the planetary atomic model and the emission or absorption of light quanta by quantum jumps. The correspondence of Bohr with Rutherford, who found the paper too long, is the frame story to mediate Bohr's epistemological thoughts about his postulates. The chapter closes with Einstein's word: ``this is the highest musicality in the sphere of thought.'' Chapter 3 considers the transition from the ``old quantum theory'' to the matrix and wave mechanics. Bohr was aware of these new approaches, the duality of wave and particle and the uncertainty relation when he created his first version of complementarity. Bohr's correspondence principle as well as his view on the relationship between mathematics and physics are described. Chapter 4 is the first one devoted to completely complementarity. The author distills the version proposed in the Como lecture (1927) also from sources which appeared later. Relations to discontinuity and irrationality as well as to space-time coordination and causality are looked on. Influenced by Einstein, Bohr changed to another approach to complementarity even before the Como lecture was published. As described in Chapter 5 complementarity is now based on Heisenberg's uncertainty relation, e.g., position-momentum coordination, called reciprocity. In Chapter 6, Bohr's view on the double slit experiments i…
reviewed by: K.-E. Hellwig
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 81-01
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 81-03
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 81P05
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 01A70
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 01A60
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 00A79
zbMATH DE Number: 6054197
zbMATH Keywords: Bohr-Einstein debates
zbMATH Keywords: changes in the meaning of complementarity
zbMATH Keywords: Copenhagen interpretation
MaRDI profile type: Publication
full work available at URL: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-4517-3
OpenAlex ID: W2482932104
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description: scientific article; zbMATH DE number 6054197