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Letters from the Past - A PRL Retrospective
As part of the celebration of PRL's 50th anniversary, we will be presenting throughout 2008 a series of milestone Letters that made long-lived contributions to physics, either by announcing significant discoveries, or by initiating new areas of research. A number of these articles report on work that was later recognized with a Nobel Prize for one or more of the authors. Starting the week of January 2, we will present a few important Letters from PRL in 1958, and the next week from 1959, etc., continuing up through the year 2000.
Selection of these important papers is not an easy task. There is an overabundance of highlights in each year, and efforts have been made to obtain a distribution of such articles in the various fields of physics. It is inevitable that some very important work will not be featured, and this may be taken as an indication of the breadth and high quality of the contents of Physical Review Letters.
The Editor of this PRL retrospective is Martin Blume, my predecessor as Editor-in-Chief of the APS. He is assisted by PRL editor Yonko Millev. Another PRL editor, Jerome Malenfant, helped significantly in the initiation of this project. We wish to thank Evelyn Hu for suggesting this program.
Gene D. Sprouse
Editor-in-Chief, APS
 Stay up to date on PRL 50th Milestone Letters, Editorials, and Essays via RSS.
1973Nobel Prize in Physics - 2004 Ultraviolet Behavior of Non-Abelian Gauge Theories
David J. Gross and Frank Wilczek
Phys. Rev. Lett. 30, 1343 (1973)
More Information | Read Letter | Reliable Perturbative Results for Strong Interactions?
H. David Politzer
Phys. Rev. Lett. 30, 1346 (1973)
More Information | Read Letter | In these Letters the authors showed that in certain theories of the strong interactions — the forces that hold nuclei together — it was possible for forces to become weaker as the energy increased. This “asymptotic freedom” meant that calculations using perturbation theory could be carried out to obtain results that might be compared with experiment. Wilczek (at Princeton) and Politzer (at Harvard) did their research as graduate students, and Gross was Wilczek’s thesis adviser. Their work withstood the test of time, and the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to David Gross, H. David Politzer, and Frank Wilczek "for the discovery of asymptotic freedom in the theory of the strong interaction". See also the Nobel committee’s information for the public and the Nobel Focus story Phys. Rev. Focus 14, story 15. These give a detailed yet understandable description of this work and its significance.
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1972Critical Exponents in 3.99 Dimensions
Kenneth G. Wilson and Michael E. Fisher
Phys. Rev. Lett. 28, 240 (1972)
More Information | Read Letter | Feynman-Graph Expansion for Critical Exponents
Kenneth G. Wilson
Phys. Rev. Lett. 28, 548 (1972)
More Information | Read Letter | Kenneth Wilson received the 1982 Nobel Prize in physics for his theory of phase transitions based on what is called the renormalization group. He built on previous work by Leo Kadanoff and Michael Fisher, with whom he shared the 1980 Wolf Prize.
Wilson’s Nobel Prize winning work was published in 1971 in Physical Review B [ PRB 4, 3174, and PRB 4, 3184]. In the Letters quoted here several consequences of the work in the PRB publications were developed and were used in much future research. An excellent, accessible summary of the background and content of Wilson’s research and of its impact is available in the Nobel committee’s 1982 press release.
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Nobel Prize in Physics - 1996 Evidence for a New Phase of Solid He3
D. D. Osheroff, R. C. Richardson, and D. M. Lee
Phys. Rev. Lett. 28, 885 (1972)
More Information | Read Letter | New Magnetic Phenomena in Liquid He3 below 3 mK
D. D. Osheroff, W. J. Gully, R. C. Richardson, and D. M. Lee
Phys. Rev. Lett. 29, 920 (1972)
More Information | Read Letter | Osheroff, Richardson, and Lee were looking for a phase transition to a kind of magnetic order in solid helium-3 at very low temperatures. They were achieving these temperatures by using what was called “Pomeranchuk cooling” – putting pressure on a mixture of solid and liquid helium-3. In the first Letter two anomalies in the measurement were interpreted as phase transitions in solid helium-3. But because of uncertainties in the interpretation the authors used a crude version of what later was named “magnetic resonance imaging” to determine that the anomalies were in the liquid. Other measurements led to the conclusion that they had in fact discovered superfluid helium-3. An important element in this interpretation was the theoretical work of Leggett (see following Milestone).
For this research Osheroff, Richardson, and Lee received the 1996 Nobel Prize in Physics “for the discovery of superfluid helium-3”. For further information see David Lee’s Nobel lecture [ Rev. Mod. Phys. 69, 646 (1997)] and the Nobel Committee’s press release.
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Nobel Prize in Physics - 2003 Interpretation of Recent Results on He3 below 3 mK: A New Liquid Phase?
A. J. Leggett
Phys. Rev. Lett. 29, 1227 (1972)
More Information | Read Letter | [See also an important erratum: PRL 30, 411 (1973)]
Leggett describes in his Nobel lecture how he interrupted a holiday (because it rained on that day!) to meet with Robert Richardson at Leggett’s office in Sussex. Richardson described the experimental results on phase transitions in liquid He 3, which set Leggett into deep thought on their theoretical explanation. This Letter presents the foundation for understanding the properties of these complex superfluid phases. Many others contributed to that understanding as well, but Leggett was credited with the complete theoretical underpinning.
A. A. Abrikosov, V. L. Ginzburg, and A. J. Leggett were awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physics “for pioneering contributions to the theory of superconductors and superfluids”. See also Leggett’s Nobel Lecture [ Rev. Mod. Phys. 76, 999 (2004)], and the Nobel Focus story Phys. Rev. Focus 12, story 16.
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1971Eight-Vertex Model in Lattice Statistics
R. J. Baxter
Phys. Rev. Lett. 26, 832 (1971)
More Information | Read Letter | Exact mathematical solutions of model systems that undergo phase transitions are of considerable interest. The earliest and most famous of these was Lars Onsager’s solution ( Phys. Rev. 65, 117 (1944)) of the two dimensional Ising model, which illustrates the temperature dependent behavior of a ferromagnet above and below the transition temperature. Subsequently a number of other two dimensional models (called the “ice”, “F” and “KDP” models) were solved by Elliott Lieb ( Phys. Rev. 162,162; PRL 18, 1046, and 19, 108; all 1967) using mathematical methods related to those used for the Ising model.
In this Letter Baxter proposed and solved, in a mathematical tour-de-force, a problem that contains all of the above models as special cases. The properties of the solution are unusual; they have generated continued interest and research, including further developments by Baxter, to this day.
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1970Acceleration and Trapping of Particles by Radiation Pressure
A. Ashkin
Phys. Rev. Lett. 24, 156 (1970)
More Information | Read Letter | This Letter is regarded as the beginning of the use of light to trap particles, which has led to many famous applications. That light exerts pressure on matter has been known since Maxwell’s development of the theory of electromagnetism. In this paper Ashkin reports his experiments using the pressure from laser light to move and trap small transparent spheres in a transparent liquid. In addition he foresees possible developments and their uses of this technique, among them the trapping of individual atoms and viruses. He carried out and participated in many of these important experiments, which have gained wide recognition. |
1969Nobel Prize in Physics - 1990 High-Energy Inelastic e-p Scattering at 6° and 10°
E. D. Bloom, D. H. Coward, H. DeStaebler, J. Drees, G. Miller, L. W. Mo, R. E. Taylor, M. Breidenbach, J. I. Friedman, G. C. Hartmann, and H. W. Kendall
Phys. Rev. Lett. 23, 930 (1969)
More Information | Read Letter | Observed Behavior of Highly Inelastic Electron-Proton Scattering
M. Breidenbach, J. I. Friedman, H. W. Kendall, E. D. Bloom, D. H. Coward, H. DeStaebler, J. Drees, L. W. Mo, and R. E. Taylor
Phys. Rev. Lett. 23, 935 (1969)
More Information | Read Letter | Scattering of particles by molecules, atoms and nuclei has long been used to elicit information about the internal structure of those entities. A beam of particles is directed at a sample of the objects under study; measurement of the angular distribution of the particles and their energy after the collisions, as well as other particles produced by the collisions, gives information about the internal structure of the objects. The first, and most famous, example was the experiment in Ernest Rutherford’s laboratory in which alpha particles were directed at a foil. The surprising result that occasionally one of the alpha particles was scattered directly back at the source led to the planetary model of the atom, with electrons surrounding a small nucleus.
In more recent times experiments by Robert Hofstadter using electrons of up to 1 GeV from an accelerator gave information about the size of the proton and of other atomic nuclei. (Hofstadter shared the 1961 Nobel Prize in physics for his experiments).
With the completion of the two-mile-long 20 GeV Stanford Linear Accelerator various energy electron beams were turned on a hydrogen target, as described in these Letters, with the object of determining the internal structure of the proton, using deep inelastic scattering. The results inspired a number of different explanations, but eventually the combination of inelastic electron and neutrino scattering demonstrated the reality of quarks as part of the proton structure.
For their role in this research Jerome Friedman, Henry Kendall, and Richard Taylor shared the 1990 Nobel Prize in Physics (see also the Nobel press release for this award).
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1968Nobel Prize in Physics - 2002 Search for Neutrinos from the Sun
Raymond Davis, Don S. Harmer, and Kenneth C. Hoffman
Phys. Rev. Lett. 20, 1205 (1968)
More Information | Read Letter | Present Status of the Theoretical Predictions for the 37Cl Solar-Neutrino Experiment*
John N. Bahcall, Neta A. Bahcall, and Giora Shaviv
Phys. Rev. Lett. 20, 1209 (1968)
More Information | Read Letter | *The published title erroneously refers to chlorine 36—the abstract and article properly refer to chlorine 37.
The path for Raymond Davis from the beginnings in the 1950s of his search for neutrinos from the sun to the 2002 Nobel Prize was long and uncertain - see his Nobel lecture (presented by Davis’ son Andrew), reprinted in Reviews of Modern Physics 75, 985 (2003). It required the establishment of an observatory in a mine 1500 meters below ground level (to shield out other radiation that might give false signals) with a 380,000 liter tank of perchloroethylene, a cleaning fluid. The chlorine 37 nucleus captures a neutrino and emits an electron, producing argon 37, which is then detected in a complex process. This requires a precise calculation of the theoretical production rate of solar neutrinos according to models of the solar interior. The vital theory was carried out by John Bahcall and coworkers over many years, in a long collaboration with Davis. The Letters presented here give initial results from the experiment and their interpretation.
The solar neutrino puzzle, that only about one third the expected number of neutrinos was found by Davis, gathered over the years a greater measure of precision. For the resolution, which contributed not only to the understanding of the sun’s interior but to the nature of neutrinos themselves, see Davis’ Nobel lecture and Phys. Rev. Focus 10, story 18.
The 2002 Nobel Prize was awarded to Raymond Davis and Masatoshi Koshiba for the development of neutrino astronomy, and to Riccardo Giacconi for the discovery of cosmic x-ray sources (see the 1962 Milestones).
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1967Nobel Prize in Physics - 1979 A Model of Leptons
Steven Weinberg
Phys. Rev. Lett. 19, 1264 (1967)
More Information | Read Letter | Weinberg showed in this famous Letter how the electromagnetic force, carried by the massless photon, and weak force (which is responsible for beta decay), carried by massive W and Z bosons, are unified into a single electroweak force. We observe two different forces because the gauge symmetry of the electroweak force is spontaneously broken (see the Milestone Letters of 1964), giving mass to the W and Z and thus limiting the weak force range. This Letter is the most highly cited research paper in particle physics, yet it was not cited in a journal at all in the first year after its publication, and was referred to only twice in the following two years.
Sheldon Glashow, Abdus Salam, and Steven Weinberg shared the 1979 Nobel Prize for their contributions to this theory.
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1966Absence of Ferromagnetism or Antiferromagnetism in One- or Two-Dimensional Isotropic Heisenberg Models
N. D. Mermin and H. Wagner
Phys. Rev. Lett. 17, 1133 (1966)
More Information | Read Letter | In this Letter the authors prove that the isotropic Heisenberg model exhibits no long-range magnetic order in either one or two spatial dimensions. As the authors acknowledge, their research was stimulated by P. C. Hohenberg’s similar conclusions for superfluids ( Phys Rev 158, 383 (1967)). The results of their theoretical work, while long suspected from approximate calculations, represent a first rigorous proof of the absence of long-range order in these systems, and the process has been widely used, up to the present, in many other theoretical applications. Note that there are many typographical errors in the paper, which are corrected in an erratum ( PRL 17, 1307 (1966)). |
1965Interaction of "Solitons" in a Collisionless Plasma and the Recurrence of Initial States
N. J. Zabusky and M. D. Kruskal
Phys. Rev. Lett. 15, 240 (1965)
More Information | Read Letter | In this highly cited and frequently downloaded Letter, Zabusky and Kruskal examine the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou paradox, which was found in what arguably was the first computer experiment. Instead of dividing the energy of a nonlinear system among the different modes, they found that, when the computer was run for a sufficient length of time, the initial states recurred. For a fascinating explanation of the inclusion of the unfamiliar name of Mary Tsingou, see T. Dauxois, Physics Today 61, 55 (2008) [ PDF].
The following quote from that article, which was discovered while researching the Zabusky-Kruskal Letter, gives an excellent summary of the importance of the Letter:
“In the 1960s, pursuing the solution of the FPU paradox, Norman Zabusky and Martin Kruskal looked at the problem in real space rather than in Fourier space. They were able to explain the periodic behavior in terms of the dynamics of localized excitations now known as solitons. Those localized, or solitary, waves with the properties of particles (hence the suffix "-on") have many physical applications and are today the subject of a field of study in their own right.”
We thank Professor Thierry Dauxois and Physics Today for permission to quote from that most interesting bit of history, and for making the article freely available on line.
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1964Nobel Prize in Physics - 1980 Evidence for the 2π decay of the Κ20 Meson
J. H. Christenson, J. W. Cronin, V. L. Fitch, and R. Turlay
Phys. Rev. Lett. 13, 138 (1964)
More Information | Read Letter | K mesons were discovered and studied through the 1950s and, because of the odd way they decayed, came to be called "strange" particles and assigned a strangeness quantum number. The neutral Κ meson (Κ0), with strangeness +1, can mix through the weak interaction with its antiparticle the Κ0, with strangeness -1, to form the mass eigenstates ΚS0 and ΚL0. Both these eigenstates decay through the weak interaction into pions. It was known at the time of this Letter that the weak interaction violated parity P and charge conjugation C, but it was believed that it conserved charge parity CP. Conservation of CP requires that the ΚS0 meson can only decay into an even-pion state (which has CP = +1), and the ΚL0 only into an odd-pion state (CP = -1). This Letter presented experimental evidence that the ΚL0 meson (called Κ20 at the time) also has a small probability of decaying into 2 pions, so that the weak interaction violates charge parity as well.
For the discovery of CP violation in the decay of neutral K mesons, Cronin and Fitch were awarded the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physics.
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Broken Symmetry and the Mass of Gauge Vector Mesons
F. Englert and R. Brout
Phys. Rev. Lett. 13, 321 (1964)
More Information | Read Letter | Broken Symmetries and the Masses of Gauge Bosons
Peter W. Higgs
Phys. Rev. Lett. 13, 508 (1964)
More Information | Read Letter | Global Conservation Laws and Massless Particles
G. S. Guralnik, C. R. Hagen, and T. W. Kibble
Phys. Rev. Lett. 13, 585 (1964)
More Information | Read Letter | These Letters contain an explanation that shows how mass could arise in local gauge theories. Gauge symmetries explain how the strong and electroweak forces arise, but such symmetries forbid vector boson mass terms. The authors showed how gauge symmetries could be spontaneously broken in such a way that the vector bosons of the theory acquire mass. A number of earlier Physical Review papers foresaw different aspects of this mechanism. The Large Hadron Collider at CERN will be searching for a particle (generally called the “Higgs”) that will constitute evidence for these theories.
The 2004 Wolf Prize was awarded to Englert, Brout, and Higgs for their contributions to the theories.
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1963Nobel Prize in Physics - 2005 Photon Correlations
Roy J. Glauber
Phys. Rev. Lett. 10, 84 (1963)
More Information | Read Letter | This Letter first introduced Glauber’s treatment of the quantum properties of light and its interactions with atoms. He developed this extensively in articles in Physical Review, and presented seventeen(!) lectures on the subject at the 1964 Les Houches summer school (published in the book Quantum Optics and Electronics, Gordon and Breach, 1965). There was much disagreement over the need for a quantum treatment. Glauber argued that the then recent development of the laser and of detectors that could measure a single optical photon made more than a classical treatment essential. Ultimately his view prevailed, and was recognized with the 2005 Nobel Prize. (See also Phys. Rev. Focus 16, story 13.) |
Gravitational Field of a Spinning Mass as an Example of Algebraically Special Metrics
Roy P. Kerr
Phys. Rev. Lett. 11, 237 (1963)
More Information | Read Letter | In this Letter Kerr presented a new exact solution of the Einstein gravitational field equations, only the third such solution up to that time. The expression for the metric tensor, now known as the Kerr metric, describes the space-time geometry, called frame dragging, in the vicinity of an uncharged rotating point mass (or a black hole). It also describes, approximately, the geometry outside an extended rotating body such as the Earth. In spite of its seemingly impenetrable mathematics and terminology the paper was understood, appreciated, and built upon by physicists working in the field. An experimental test of predictions based on the metric has been a major goal of Gravity Probe B, a NASA/Stanford satellite mission launched in 2004, which collected data until 2005. (See also Physics News Update 820 #2.)
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1962Nobel Prize in Physics - 1988 Observation of High-Energy Neutrino Reactions and the Existence of Two Kinds of Neutrinos
G. Danby, J-M. Gaillard, K. Goulianos, L. M. Lederman, N. Mistry, M. Schwartz, and J. Steinberger
Phys. Rev. Lett. 9, 36 (1962)
More Information | Read Letter | This Letter reported an experiment that demonstrated a difference in neutrinos produced in the decay of π-mesons into muons, and neutrinos from those produced in β-decay, the decay of nuclei into electrons and neutrinos. The π-mesons were produced by a beam of protons striking a target; the π-mesons then decayed in flight into muons and neutrinos. After passing through shielding to remove all other particles the neutrinos interacted with the matter in the plates of an aluminum spark chamber, where they produced muons but not electrons. For this discovery of the muon neutrino and the development of the neutrino-beam method that made it possible the 1988 Nobel Prize was given to three of the authors of this Letter: Leon Lederman, Melvin Schwartz, and Jack Steinberger. |
Nobel Prize in Physics - 2002 Evidence for X Rays from Sources Outside the Solar System
Riccardo Giacconi, Herbert Gursky, Frank R. Paolini, and Bruno B. Rossi
Phys. Rev. Lett. 9, 439 (1962)
More Information | Read Letter | Riccardo Giacconi shared the 2002 Nobel Prize with Raymond Davis and Masatoshi Koshiba; Davis and Koshiba for the development of neutrino astronomy, and Giacconi for the discovery of cosmic x-ray sources. This Letter reports the first observation of an x-ray source outside the Solar System. The x-ray detector was launched on a rocket to look for x-ray emissions from the Moon; instead they found a bright source of soft x-rays in the constellation Scorpius. This source, now known as Scorpius X-1, is the brightest x-ray source in the sky after the Sun. It has since been identified as a neutron star in a binary-star system some 9,000 light years away. (See also Phys. Rev. Focus 10, story 18.) |
Coherent Light Emission from GaAs Junctions
R. N. Hall, G. E. Fenner, J. D. Kingsley, T. J. Soltys, and R. O. Carlson
Phys. Rev. Lett. 9, 366 (1962)
More Information | Read Letter | This Letter reports the first observation of laser action in a solid-state device; it was followed (very) closely by groups at IBM, Lincoln Laboratory of MIT, and by others at General Electric. All of the latter publications appeared in the first volume of Applied Physics Letters. Further development of diode lasers, producing high collimation and intensity and with ease of fabrication, ultimately made possible the optical storage of data, music, and video. |
1961Generation of Optical Harmonics
P. A. Franken, A. E. Hill, C. W. Peters, and G. Weinreich
Phys. Rev. Lett. 7, 118 (1961)
More Information | Read Letter | After the successful demonstration of the ruby laser by Maiman it was realized that focusing of the laser beam could produce a very strong electric field in a dielectric. This clearly written Letter is widely recognized as a pioneering demonstration of a nonlinear optical effect, where the intense laser beam produces a second beam at twice the laser light frequency. The paper contains a theoretical outline and experimental example of the second harmonic generation of light in quartz, and it is still heavily read and cited. |
Experimental Evidence for Quantized Flux in Superconducting Cylinders
Bascom S. Deaver and William M. Fairbank
Phys. Rev. Lett. 7, 43 (1961)
More Information | Read Letter | Theoretical Considerations Concerning Quantized Magnetic Flux In Superconducting Cylinders
N. Byers and C. N. Yang
Phys. Rev. Lett. 7, 46 (1961)
More Information | Read Letter | In the first of these two Letters, Deaver and Fairbank reported their observation that the magnetic flux trapped in hollow superconducting tin cylinders was quantized in units of hc/2e. Earlier, in 1950, Fritz London had predicted this quantization effect but in units of hc/e, twice the result of Deaver and Fairbank. In the second Letter Byers and Yang interpreted Deaver and Fairbank's results. They showed that the quantization of magnetic flux through a superconducting ring is closely related to the Meissner effect, in which a superconductor expels magnetic flux from its interior, and that the factor of 1/2 is an indication of the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer pairing of the electrons in the superconducting state. |
1960Apparent Weight of Photons
R. V. Pound and G. A. Rebka
Phys. Rev. Lett. 4, 337 (1960)
More Information | Read Letter | After the discovery in 1958 of recoil free absorption of gamma rays in iridium by Rudolf Mössbauer there was much interest in performing experiments with different isomers. Attention focused on Fe 57, with the expectation that an experiment to detect the effect of gravity on gamma radiation, as predicted by Einstein in 1911, could be carried out. Several groups made efforts to observe the resonance in Fe 57, and once this was accomplished there was an explosion of experiments that led to the observation and application of nuclear hyperfine magnetic and quadrupole splittings and the chemical isomer shift. In this Letter Pound and Rebka describe the results of their experiment, which was the most definitive of the efforts to observe gravitational effects. They had to account for many possible differences between the source and the absorber that could mask the gravitational shift of the frequency, and the results were in agreement with Einstein's prediction. (See also Phys. Rev. Focus 16, story 1.) |
Nobel Prize in Physics - 1973 Energy Gap in Superconductors Measured by Electron Tunneling
Ivar Giaever
Phys. Rev. Lett. 5, 147 (1960)
More Information | Read Letter | Electron Tunneling Between Two Superconductors
Ivar Giaever
Phys. Rev. Lett. 5, 464 (1960)
More Information | Read Letter | Ivar Giaever shared the 1973 Nobel Prize with Leo Esaki and Brian Josephson; Esaki for the junction diode based on tunneling in semiconductors, and Josephson for the tunneling of BCS electron pairs between superconductors. The two Letters shown here were the basis for the award to Giaever. In these experiments he demonstrated the change in the electron density of states (the appearance of a gap) on going from the normal to the superconducting state, in agreement with the BCS theory. |
1959Lattice Vibrations in Silicon and Germanium
B. N. Brockhouse
Phys. Rev. Lett. 2, 256 (1959)
More Information | Read Letter | Bertram Brockhouse and Clifford Shull shared the physics Nobel Prize in 1994 for their researches using neutron scattering. Brockhouse was cited for his experiments using inelastic scattering, which enabled the study of excitations in solids, while Shull received the award for his elastic scattering studies, which gave information on structure, both magnetic and physical, of condensed matter. It is difficult to cite a single paper that led to this prize, but we give here an example of the work of Brockhouse that uses the techniques (particularly the "triple axis spectrometer") for which he was cited. The phonon spectra of silicon and germanium are of particular interest because of their considerable practical as well as theoretical importance. |
Calculation of Partition Functions
J. Hubbard
Phys. Rev. Lett. 3, 77 (1959)
More Information | Read Letter | This very mathematical Letter has had a significant impact in all areas of physics and chemistry. The formalism enables the calculation of the thermodynamic properties of quantum-mechanical systems in condensed matter and in quark matter. Hubbard outlines a rederivation of results for the correlation energy of an electron gas, of the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer theory of superconductivity, and of correlations in nuclear matter. The mathematical techniques have also made possible numerical Monte Carlo calculations of the properties of quantum-mechanical systems. After nearly fifty years it is still very frequently downloaded from the APS PROLA archive. |
1958Element No. 102
A. Ghiorso, T. Sikkeland, J. R. Walton, and G. T. Seaborg
Phys. Rev. Lett. 1, 18 (1958)
More Information | Read Letter | This Letter announced the first synthesis of an isotope of the transuranic element 102 and described a then-new technique to identify high-Z elements. A year earlier researchers at the Nobel Institute in Sweden had claimed to have discovered an isotope of this element with a 10-minute half-life and proposed the name "nobelium" for it [P. R. Fields et al., Phys. Rev. 107, 1460 (1957)]. This claim could not be confirmed, either by these authors at UC Berkeley [ PRL 1, 17 (1958)] or by a group at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia. The Dubna group did confirm the Berkeley group's work and further confirming experiments were done at Berkeley in 1966. The Berkeley group eventually got credit for the discovery and the right to name it, but recommended that the name nobelium be retained. |
Two-Fluid Model of Superconductivity
John Bardeen
Phys. Rev. Lett. 1, 399 (1958)
More Information | Read Letter | The famous Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) theory of superconductivity, for which the Nobel prize was awarded in 1972, was announced in 1957, before the creation of Physical Review Letters. Many papers following up on that theory subsequently appeared in PRL. In this paper Bardeen raises the question of the oft-made comparison between superconductivity and the superfluidity of liquid helium 4. The phenomenological two fluid (normal and superfluid) model of helium 4 introduced by Fritz London was applied to superconducting electrons as well, but the BCS theory justification for this was not obvious. Bardeen here shows that there is a basis for that comparison, based on reasonable approximations. |
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