The genesis of Feynman diagrams.
type: Item
instance of: scholarly article
title: The genesis of Feynman diagrams.
zbMATH Open document ID: 1226.81008
DOI: 10.1007/978-90-481-9228-1
author: Adrian Wüthrich
published in: Archimedes
publication date: 2010-05-17T00:00:00Z
review text: Feynman diagrams enable us to find the relevant expressions in a perturbative expansion to the equations describing the dynamics of a quantum electrodynamic system. From the very conception of the process as a sequence of particle creations and annihilations, one can draw a scheme relating these creations and annihilation events. The diagram thus obtained can then be transmogrified, element by element, into a complex mathematical expression, the evaluation of which yields an observable quantity characterizing the physical system. The aim of this book is to reconstruct the route that led Feynman, between approximately 1946 and 1948, to devise his new methods of diagrams and to evaluate what was achieved. The book consists of 7 chapters. The core of the book are Chapters 2--6. In Chapter 2 the author discusses the diagrams used by \textit{H. Euler} [Ann. der Physik, V. F. 26, 398--448 (1936; Zbl 0014.23706)] and by Ziro Koba and Gyo Takeda in the latter half of the 1940s as precurssors of diagrammatic representations. By doing so, he discerns the change in the conception and representation of diagrammatic representations brought out by Feynman and Dyson. Chapter 3 is concerned with Feynman's PhD thesis. In the early 1940s, when Feynman was a graduate student, one of the most pressing problems in theoretical physics was the fact that infinite quantities arose from some of the principles of electrodynamics in both classical and any attempted quantum theory. Feynman's strategy was first to establish a divergence-free classical electrodynamics and then to quantize it. \textit{R. P. Feynman} and his supervisor \textit{J. A. Wheeler} [Rev. Mod. Phys. 21, 425--433 (1949; Zbl 0034.27801)] had already developed an alternative theory of classical electrodynamics with the desired feature that awaited quantization by the time Feynman had started working on his thesis. The standard procedure for quantizing a classical theory was to interpret the classical Hamiltonian function as a…
reviewed by: Hirokazu Nishimura
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 81-03
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 01A60
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 81T18
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 81Q30
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 81U20
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 81V10
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 81Q05
zbMATH DE Number: 5708549
zbMATH Keywords: Feynman diagram
zbMATH Keywords: second quantization
zbMATH Keywords: quantum field theory
zbMATH Keywords: quantum electrodynamics
zbMATH Keywords: \(S\)-matrix theory
zbMATH Keywords: Dirac equation
zbMATH Keywords: Schrödinger equation
MaRDI profile type: Publication
full work available at URL: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9228-1
OpenAlex ID: W4206517918
description: scientific article; zbMATH DE number 5708549