Louis de Broglie, “The Principles of the New Wave Mechanics”: translation and Notes

This article highlights that the final part of the article “Les Principes de la Nouvelle Mécanique Ondulatoire” already contains analyses of the works of Schrödinger and Heisenberg published in 1926. Schrödinger, through four seminal articles, showed that it was possible to solve the problem of stability of electron trajectories in the atomic model of Bohr, starting from the condition of quantization as an eigenvalue problem, interpreting Heisenberg’s equations according to the wave theory of De Broglie. On the other hand, Heisenberg, Born, Pauli and Leon Brillouin claimed that all information coming from the inside of atoms could be obtained by studying their spectra. Heisenberg considered it unwise to talk about the positions and velocities of intra-atomic electrons, preferring to represent the state of the atom by quantities directly linked to the frequencies and intensities observed in the spectra. In place of each coordinate $q_l$ and each moment $p_l$ included in Bohr’s theory, he introduced a double input matrix with the aspect of a determinant. Heisenberg preferred a “more abstract” way to interpret the Schrödinger wave function; the wave associated with the material particle of Louis de Broglie would lose its physical reality.

Keywords:
History of Science; Philosophy; Quantum Mechanics; Theory; Physics Teaching