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Symmetry, Conservation Laws, and

Theoretical Particle Physics

(1918-1979)

A thesis submitted in confornrity with the requirernents

for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology
University of Toronto

8 Copyright by Andris Visvaldis Knimins, 1999

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Symmetry, Conservation Laws, and Theoretical Particle Physics

(1918-1979)
Andris Vimaldis Knimins? Ph.D., 1999
Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology
University of Toronto

Abstract

In this work, we trace the role of symmetry throughout the history of theoretical
particle physics, paying particular attention to the role o f group theory, the fornial
mathematics of syrnmetry. Mer a aridysis of the role of conservation laws and invariance
in the theory of general relativity, we move on to Weyl's gauge theory of 1918, which was

developed within the context of generai relativity as an attempt to.

gravitation and

electromagnetism. Weyl was trying to exploit an invariance of scale, and although his theory
was experimentally refuted, it provided a formulation of the conservarion of charge. M e r the

advent of quantum mechanics, gauge theory was reinterpreted by London as an invariance of

the wave-fiinction-

Weyl and Wigner studied group theory in the context of quantum mechanics, but the
broadness of its application had yet to be appreciated- Symmetry was soon exploited in the
nuclear interactions, however, and we examine the events Ieading to the discovery of SU(2) of
isotopic spin. We anaiyze how the discovery of strangeness was linked to the generalization
of SU(2) to SU(3), and also how it led to a differentiation between the strong interactions,
which conserve isotopic spin and strangeness, and the weak interactions, which violate these

conservation laws, dong with the conservation of parity.

Yang and Mills were impressed with gauge invarance, and in 1954, they took the bold
step of irnposing it upon the Lagrangian of the strong interactions, forcing the introduction of
three new gauge fields. There was a problem, however, because although the short-range of

the strong interactions implied that these gauge bosons should be massive, they needed to be
massless in order to preserve gauge invariance. In addition, efforts were made to extend

Yang-Mills theory to the weak interactions, but they also faced the same zero-mass problem.
This problem was fmdly solved in 1967. when Weinberg and SaIam showed how gauge

boson masses could be generated using spontaneous symmetry breaking. They based a
unification of the electromagnetic and weak interactions upon local gauge invariance, and this
principle was soon appIied to the strong interactions as weli.

Acknowledgements

Fust and foremost, 1 wouId [ike to thank m y supervisor, Brian Baigrie- Brian was
always there to give me a d v k and help whenever 1needed t, whiIe always giving me the
freedom and space which 1 needed just a s rnuch to grow and develop as a scholar. Thanks
for always being in my corner, Brian. Thank you to Sungook Hongy who was particularly
helppful during the beginning stages of my research, when my ideas were taking shape.
Special thanks to J m Brown, for many helpfl discussions-1 got the idea for the dissertation
during a t a k with Jim. I dso appreciate tbat he welcomed me into hs monthiy meetings with
his philosophy graduate -dents.

Thank you to a l l the professors at the Institute for the History and Philosophy of
Science and Technology. Thank you to Trevor Levere for welcoming me into the Institute,
Craig Fraser and Brian Baigrie for teaching me my &a history of science classes, Bert Hail
for teaching me the ropes of the lbrary system, and Polly Winsor for being a source of
inspiration. Polly deserves special mention as she is truly one of most dedicated professors I
have ever had. These are the professors who taught me what history of science is al1 abouf
and 1am grateful for it.
1have benefitted fiom discussions with Jed Buchwdd, Jay Foster, Peter Galison, Yves
Gingras, Ian Hacking, Envin Hiebert, Ed Jurkowitz, Margaret Momson, David Pantalony,
Silvan S. Schweber, Alan Shapiro, and especiafly C a t h e ~ eWestfall. Thanks to Catherine for
going out of her way to give me help with my written work.

Thank you to the Connaught Fundyand to the Social Science and Humanities Researcb
Council for financial support. Thanks to my parents, who never doubted that 1would
succeed, and thus made that success possible. Thank you also to Muna and Zag, for their
help above and beyond the cal1 of duty. Lasf but not least, thanks to Dierdre, and to the rest
of my friends and family that helped to make my He easier, by believing in me.

Table of Contents

I.

Introduction

II.

Symmetry, Invariance, and General Relativity (19 15-17)

1. Noether and invariants

2. Specid relativity and the Lorentz group

3. Einstein and general relativity

1.
The principle of equivalence
Invariance, conservation laws, and general covariance
11.
*

4. Hilbert and the axiomatic method

5. Concluding rem&

The Origins of Gauge Theory (1918-25)

1. Weyl's gauge theory (1 9 1 8)

2. Kaluza and the five-dimensional theory (1921)

3. Concluding remarks
W.

Group Theory and Symmetry in Quantum Mechanics (1925-31)

1. Group theory and quantum mechanics

2. Symmetry and quantum mechanics

1.
**

11.
m..

111.

iv.

Spectral Iuies and electron spin

Quantum statistics and permutation symmetry
Parity, the-reversal, and charge conjugation invariance
The Lorentz group and relativistic invariance

3. Concluding remarks

V.

The Reuiterpretation of Gauge Theory (1927-34)

1. Relativistic generahations of quantum mechanics
1-

.-

ii.

Kiein and five-dimensionalreIativity (1926)

Fock and invariance (1926)

2. Rebiah of Weyl's gauge theory

Schfidinger and quantum orbits (1922)
1.
.London and the wave fnction (1927)
ri.
.- Weyl
and the principle of gauge invariance(1929)
iii.

3. ConcIuding remarks
VI. Conservation Laws and Nuclear Interactions (1930-58)
1. The continuous spectrurn ofp-decay
1.

..

ir.

Bohr and energy conservation

Pauli and the neutrino (1930)

2. The structure of the nucleus

1.

.-

11.
*.-

ru.
iv.
v.

Chadwick and the neutron (1932)

Heisenberg and exchange forces (1932)
Fermi and field theory (1933)
Yukawa's heavy particle (1934)
Charge independence and isotopic spin (1936-37)

3. Frorn cosmic rays to accelerators

A new particle in cosmic rays (1 937)
1,
-r *i .
The two-meson hypothesis (1947)
ni.
New unstable particles (1947)
Pais and associated production (1952)
iv.
v.
Gell-Mann and strangeness (1953-56)
vi.
The neutral kaon system
vii.
Dalitz and the 7-0 puzzie (1954-56)
viii. P- and C-violation (1957)
The V-A theory of the weak interactions (1958)
ix.
Resonances and the particle explosion
x.
4. ConcIuding remarks

W. Yang-Miils Theory and Gauge Fields (1954-56)

I. Yang-Mills theory
IConservation of isotopic spin and gauge invariance (1954)
.ii-.
Pauli, Klein, and Shaw
2. Utiyama and the gauge potential(1956)

3 . Concluding rernarks

VIII.

The Emergence of the Standard Mode1 (1956-79)

1. Gauge theory and vector particles

Intermediate vector boson theory

Gell-Mann and the Eightfold Way (1961)

1,
a
.

11.

2. SU(3) and quarks

3. Spontaneous symmetry breaking and the Higgs mechmimi (1 960-67)

4. Electroweak unification (1 967-68)

5. Renomalkation of gauge theones (1971)

6. Experiment and the new physics (197L)

7. The 1979 Nobel prize

8. Concluding rernarks
-

IX.

Conclusions

References

1- introduction
In this dissertation, we shail investigate the changing role of symmetry throughout the
development of high energy physics, nom its beginnings in the early 20th century, up until

the widespread acceptance of the Standard Model of particle physics in 1979. There are two
main issues to be explored:
1.

How did symmetry corne to gain its preseni status in the arena of pYticle physics?

2.

How did the widespread acceptance of group theory, the formal mathematics of
symmetry, affect the developing physics?
A symmetry is any transformation that can be applied to a system which ieaves it in a

configuration indistinguishable fiom the original. For a given physicai system, the
s y m m e ~ e sinherent in the equations of motion, and therefore in its associated Lagrangian,
prove to be quite useful. For instance, rotationai symmetry implies that if we rotate a
planetary system through any angle we choose, the resultant orbit is also a possible orbit

Symmetries and conservation laws are intimately related. In fact, Emmy Noether
proved in 1918 that every continuous symmetry of Nature yields a conserved quantity, and
that every consewation law can be linked to an underlying syrnmetry. For instance, the laws

of physics are symmetrical with respect to translations in t h e : they are supposed to work the
same way today as they did yesterday. This invariance with respect to tirne is linked to

the conservation of energy. Similarly, if a system is invariant under translation in space,

then momentum is conserved, while if it is symmetrical under rotations about a point, then
angula. momentum is conserved.

In the history of partide physics, there has been a shift in the primacy of conservation
laws and symmey. From the days of the old quantum theory, through to the 1920s and the
deveioprnent of quantum mechanics, conservation laws of space-tirne were imposed upon the
emerging physics. Early particle physicists applied these empincal laws as definitions in an

effort to make sense of their discipline, and also to esiablish what was new in the interactions
of elementary particles. Since the conserved quantities implied symnietries in the Lagrangian,
theonsts were able to guess at what the form of the Lagrmgian might be.

Today, symmetry is the foundation upon which the Standard Mode1 of particle physics
is built Each of the three forces: the strong, the electromagnetic, and the weak interaction,

is modelled upon a symmetry group. These symmetry groups not only determine the

und&ing

conservation hm--they also deterrnine what kinds of actual physical States are

possible. Theorists often propose new symmetry groups, which are then imposed upon the

Lagrangia.. This allows theorists to work out what kind of new particles should exist, and
what kinds of decays and interactions should be possibIe. In fact, certain choices of unifying
symmetry groups have led to suggestions that a well-estabiished conservation Iaw might be
violated. Experimentalists, in turn, are constantly on the lookout for evidence of these

hallmarks of new physics.

We shali analyze how this shift in the role of symmetry took place. Since the 1970s,

dl interactions in quantum field theory have been regarded as exchanges of mediating

particles cdled gauge bosons, which are derived fiom an astute choice of underlying

symmetry. There is a degree of fieedom in symmetry choice, a certain latitude within which
ali associated physically meamrable quantities remain fixed. For instance, the invariance of

electrodynamics under phase transformations, which incidentaIly irnplies that the phase of
electromagnebc fields is immeasurable, Ieaves theorists fiee to choose the phase arbitrady as
long as the physical equations can be kept invariant. This is achieved with a bit of
mathematical artince known as the requirement of local gauge invariance. 'The Lagrangian,
and the equations of motion, are forced to remain invariant by the introduction of new fieIds,
called gauge fields, which conrol the shifting phases. These gauge fields can then be
interpreted as red, physid particles-

Neither gauge invariance nor quantum field theory themselves are recent

developments. Gauge invariance was introduced by Hermann Weyl in 1918 in the context of
his proposed unified field theory of gravitation and electromagnetism, well before the omet of

quantum rnechanics. Weyl was trying to gene&ze Einstein's theory of gravitation to include
both gravitation and electromagnetism, by extending the Iocality of space-time to a different
kuid of infitesimal geometry, in which it would be possible to choose the scale of

measurement at each point in space at wiII. His plan was to relate electromagnetism to this
new kind of invariance, just as Einstein had comected gravitation with

invariance under

general continuous transformations of space-time coordinates. Weyl's point was that standard
Riemamian geometry was slightly defective, because, although it appeared to be infinitesimal,
it contained a residue of rigid Euclidean geometry since it maintained that dthough the

directions of vectors are path-independent with respect to parallel transfer, their magnitudes
are not. This is why Weyl's theory was narned gauge theory. The term gauge was

appropriate, since the rescaling of the metric tensor due to the path factor could be interpreted
as a change of length measureement, and the word gauge was in common use, at the tirne, for

the different measurements of length, for example, in the width of railway tracks.

This new theory was very appealiug, in that Weyl was able to denve a fllndarnental
conservation law, the conservation of charge, directly fkom his proposed invariance of scale.
There was no denying that mathematicdly, the theory was beautifi, and it was very inspiring

to mathematicaily oriented physicists Like Theodor Kaluza and Vladimir Fock who were
searching for their own geometrcai unified field theories. Unfortunately, the direct
application of Weyl's theory to gravitation ainied out to be unacceptable. Einstein soon
pointed out that there was a problem, aamely, that the lengths of meaninng rods and the tirne

measurements of clocks wouId be rescaled by a non-integrable factor, meaning that they

would be dependent on their history. This was in clear contradiction with the fact that atomic
spectra (known very accurately at the tirne) depend only upon the nature of the atoms, and not

upon their histories. Thus, although Weyl's theory was elegant, its direct application to
gravitational theory turned out to be unacceptable. A decade later, however, &er the birth of
quantum mechanics, gauge invariance was to be totally reinterpreted and its mathematical

structure would be regarded not as a scale invariance, but as a phase invariance.

In the mid-1920s, quantum mechanics was reshaping how physicists thought about
their discipline. While the older quantum theory was based upon classical physics, quantum

mechmics relied upon new mathematicai methods. In 1926, Eugene Wigner forged a link
between quantum mechanics and group theory, the formal mathematics of symmetry, when he
recognized that the theory of transformation groups could be used to solve problems involving

identical particles. Group theory was not at a l l new. In fact, it was a well-entrenched
mathematical theory which had flourished under Felix Klein and Sophus Lie in the late 19th

century, but was not at ali widely used withn physics until the 1920~~
whm it was realized
that group theory provided powerfiil methods which muid be used to treat the developing

mathematics of quantized spin and angular momenhim In 1927, Wolfgang Pauli introduced
three spin matrices which operated on a two-component mode1 of the electron. Wigner soon

recognized that the three Pauli spin matrices codd be identined as the three generators of the
two-dimensional representation of the group SU(2). Independently, this was aiso recognized
by Weyl, who was also very familiar with group theory,

Others found formal group-theoretical treatments unoecessary. Physicists like Edward

Condon, for example, preferred direct computation, and indeed, the appeafance of
mathematical calcdations involved in the transfomations of SU(2) would have been familiar
to anyone versed in classical mechanics, since SU(2) has a mathematical structure almost
identical to that of 0(3), which is just the group of ordinary rotations in our three dimensional
world. Therefore, even though Weyl published a book on group theory and quantum
mechanics in 1928, and Wigner published his own in 1931, it was a long tirne before group
theory gained wide acceptance among the particle physics communiy. The broadness of its

application had yet to be discovered-

In the wake of quantum mechanics, Fritz London was very impressed with Weyl's
theory, as well as with Weyl's conviction that it was correct in the face of conflicting
experimental evidence. The flaw with Weyl's original theory, according to London in 1927,

lay not in the identification of its non-integrable factor with electromagnetism, but in its
application as a gravitational scale factor. London believed that gauge invariance contained a

rnuch wider range of possibiIities th& Weyl had fim envisioned, including nothng l e s than
a logicd path to wave mechanics. The key to the reformulation o f gauge theory was the

reinterpretation of the Weyl scale factor- London recommended that the non-integrable scale
factor of the metric be reinterpreted as a phase factor of the wave-bction. Weyl accepted

this proposal with great enthusiasm, and in fact, he soon went beyond it. Just two years later,
he published his now famous paper of 1929, in which he suggested that gauge invariance be

used as aprinciple fiom which the electromagnetic interactons could be derived. This phase
invariance eventuaily tumed out to be a powemil tool in the development of quantum field
theory, but not until a few dccades later. This is because, again, although the theory was

mathematically sophistcated, its physical interpretation was problematic. Gauge theory was
stili regarded, in the main, as a mathematical cuiosity, because although it attempted a

unification of gravitation and electromagnetism, it completely failed to take account of the

emerging physics of nuclear interactions.

In the early 1930s, the study of the nucleus revealed new interactions of short-rangeSince 1913, when Neils Bohr had argued that 6-decay was a nuclear process, there had been

many attempts to explain these processes electromagneticdly, using a proton-electron mode1

of the nucleus, but they were all unniccessfl. They codd not explain how the electrons
emitted in p-decay were contained in the nucleus, or why they were emitted with a continuous
energy spectnim, rather than a fixed value, as was to be expected fiom a two-body decay.

This problem was so troubling, it even threw the conservation of energy into doubt! Pauli
saved the conservation law in 1930 by postulathg an undetected particle, now known as the

neutrino, which could cary off the missing energy. In 1932, James Chadwick discovered the

neutron, but it was stiU far fiom obvious how to explain how eiectrons were emitted fkom the
nucleus. EMCOFermi solved this problem in Iate 1933, by offerhg a field-theoretid
solution to the problem of @-decay. Electrons were not already present in the nucleus, but
uistead, they were created in the process of emission, dong with the associated neutrinos.
A year earlier, in 1932, Werner Heisenberg had discovered a symmetry within the

nucleus. While working to explain the structure of nuclei by a quantum mechanical

interaction between protons and neutrons, he noticed an invariance of the Hamlltonan under
exchange of the two types of particles. This was enough to explain the short-range attractive
forces between protons and neutrons, and between neutrons and other neutrons. Between
protons and other protons, however, there was no new force, and Heisenberg assumed

electrical forces oniy. In a way, Heisenberg considered the interaction between the proton and
neutron to be like an exchange back and forth of a spi1ess electron. His theory explained the

stability of nuclei weii, because at close range, attractive forces dominated, although at greater
distances, nuclei repelled each other. Although Heisenberg was experimentally refuted in
1936 by the discovery of charge independence of nuclear forces, his idea, and his

mathematics, were generalized by Wigner in 1937 to an SU(2) symmetry of isotopic spin,

later to be called isospin.

This new SU(2) symmetry was markedly dinerent fiom other known symmetries.
Previously, physical conceptions of symmetry such as rotation, Lorentz invariance, general
covariance, and even party had d l centred upon the symmetry of space-time, and even
electron spin was thought of in tenns of up and down. Isospin was M e r e n t Although
isospin drew its name fkom its mathematical similarities to the quantum theory of spin, it had

nothing to do with space-time, or even spin, for that matter- It was merely an intemal
symmetry demonstrating the relations between sets of distinct particles, yet its eventual
interpretation involved a conceptual leap. A rotation in three-dimensionai space is not thought
to change an electron intrinsicdy: the eIectron before and d e r the rotation is the same
electron, just with its orientation of spin reversed. A rotation in isospin space, however, can
change the identity of a particle.

For instance, under group ~ o r m a i o n a, proton c a . be

physically transformed into a neutron. Mer this step was Uy appreciated, it meant that no
longer did protons and neutrons have separate identities: within the context of group theory,
their identities became h e d A few years earlier, in 1934, Hideki Yukawa was trying to explain both the theones of

Heisenberg, and Fenni, fiom phenomenological considerations, rather than by symmetry

arguments. He was troubled that although in Fermi theory, the neutron and proton can

interact by emitting or absorbing a paired electron and neutrino, this interaction energy is not
nearly enough to account for the binding energies of neutrons and protons within the nucleus.

To remove this defect, Yukawa proposed that the transition from neutron to proton was not
always accompanied by the emission of light particles, but on the contrary, it was more often

accompanied by the emission of a new, heavy particle, which couid then initiate a transition

from proton to neutron. In other words, neutrons and protons could exchange this new
particle, which came to be known as the Yukawa meson, back and forth, but a small fiaction

of the time, this particle could mediate a B-decay. nius, the new theory could simultaneously
explain the intense interaction of the neutron and the proton, and the relatively small

probability of 0-decay as predicted by Fermi theory. The only drawback was that the theory

reIied upon a hypothetical particle with specif5c properties: it wouId have to have a mass
intermediate between the electron and the proton, an integral spin, and either a positive or
negative charge.
A candidate for Yukawa's particle was soon discovered. In 1937, Neddemeyer and

Anderson reported the discovery of a heavy particle found withui cosmic rays whkh seemed
to fit the description which Yukawa had demanded. For the next decade, there were high
expectations that nucIear forces could be descnibed by a meson field theory, just as

electromagnetism was described by quantum electrodynamics (QED). During this rime, many
qualitative insights emerged fkom the theory, nich as the range, strength, and spin-dependence

of the meson, but the agreement with the observed Iifietime and scattering cross-section was
poor. In 1946, the theory was totally unable to explain the new results fiom the ConversiPancini-Piccioni experiment, which meanired the Merence in behaviour of the positvely and
negatively charged varieties of the meson. A year later, Marshak and Bethe solved the
problem: there were two different kinds of mesons! The first cosmic ray meson, the p-

meson, turned out to be a weaker interacting decay product of the even less stable, but
stronger interacting n-meson. Even after this clarification, however, meson field theory still
had problems.

Perturbative techniques, which had been so s u c c e s f i in QED,broke down in

meson field theory because the nuclear force involved was much more powerful than
electromagnetism, and so the coupiing constant was much Iarger. As more and more particles
were discovered, in fact, it began to be questioned whether mesons were even hdamental
particles at all.

Cosmic rays were proving to be a nch source of new particles- In 1947, Rochester
and Butler announced the existence of two new, unstable eIementary particles, which came to
be known as V-particles.

Since they were rare, they did not cause much widespread

excitement at kst, but that changed in the 1950s, when a senes of experiments reveded a
whole series of V-particks, which were distingui-shed by the abundance of their producion
together with their comparatively long lifetimes. In 1952, Abraham Pais attempted to
reconcile these two apparently conflicting properties, by offering a new selection rule which
would hold for electrornagnetic and strong couplings, but not for weak couplings, that is,
those of the same magnitude as found in & and pdecay. According to the new nile, the Vparticles should only be produced in pairs, a concept referred to as associated productionThe foIlowing year, Murray Gell-Mann provided a more refined and highly successfbl

expression of this mechanism through the introduction of a new quantum number,

sh-angeness, which was to be conserved in electromagnetic and strong interactions, but not in

weak interactions.
Strange particles soon led to the violation of the well-established consemation of
party. In 1954, Richard Dalia presented an d y s i s of the decays of two particles, the T-

meson and the 8-meson. Although the two sets of decay products belonged to distinct parityangular momentum States, in al1 other ways, the particles seemed to be identical- In 1956,

Lee and Yang suggested that these two particles might represent different decay modes of the

same particle, although this idea implied that the weU-entrenched concept of pari@, the
symmetry with respect to invariance under spatial refiection, wouid not be conserved in weak
interactions. In a senes of ingenious experiments, this stsrtling proposal was soon connmied.

The experrnental evdence Ied to a rapid clarification of the 8-Hamiltonian, and by 1958,

three different papers had offered a new and mproved version of the Fermi interaction, which
carne to be known as the vector-axial (V-A) theory. Although the V-A theory enjoyed much
success, it proved once and for a i l that the weak interactions could not be mediated by a rmeson field, as hoped by Yukawa, since a-mesons are pseudoscalar, and thus, they cannot
provide the vector coupling needed. Therefore, t seemed that the weak interactions were
unamenable to quantum field theory.

In 1954, Yang and M a s turned their attention to the strong interaction, and they
published two papers in which they proposed a new generalized gauge invariance. They were
very impressed by the fact that conservation of charge was related to invariance under phase

changes, so they sought a similar invariance corresponding to conservation of isotopic spin-

Their inspiration and strategy were similar to Weyl's, but their implementation was more
subtle. Although global isospin invariance is an obvious symmetry of the Yang-Mills
Lagrangian, local isospin invariance must be irnposed upon it, and not just by the introduction
of a single gauge field as is necessary in quantum electrodynamics, but by three of them.

Thus, Yang and Mills introduced a triplet of vector fields, which they c d e d the b field.

Unlike Maxwell's equations, which are Iinear in A, the isotopic gauge field equations are
nonlinear in b. This is because photons do not carry charge, but the isotopic field does carry
isospin, and so it acts as a source for itself. Mathematically, this is a consequence of the

transformations involved in SU(2) being non-Abelian (2x2 matrices do not cornmute, although
1x1 matrices obviously do).

This new theory, however, had a snag. Although the photon is

guaranteed zero-mass in QED, there is no corresponding argument for the b quantum, and any

massive vector field spoils gauge invariance of the Lagrangian, and in addition, generates
divergences which nn renormalization. This problem was not overcome until over a decade
later. Until then, the work of Yang and H s seemed to be yet another w o n d e f i idea that
Nature had chosen not to exploit.
During the 1 9 5 0 ~accelerator
~
physics came into its own. The experimental study of

elementary particles had entered the era of big physics. Prevously, observations of cosmic
ray showers in cloud chambers and emuIsions had reveaied the existence of unstable particles
with short lifetimes, dthough they were able to travel a perceptible distance in the detector

before decaying. In c o n t r a the new high energy accelerators, with their new detector
technology, dowed physicists to systematically shidy the properties of the strong force by
examining tens of thousands of interactions. Scores of extremely shoa'4ved baryons and

mesons called resonances were found, and then characterized by theu production and decay
characteristics. In 1964, Murray Gell-Mann and Yuval Ne'eman introduced a clever
classification scheme called the Eightfold Way, based upon isotopic spin and strangeness, and
named for the octets which it produced. It proved to be very successful, and even though
most physicists were surprisingly ignorant of group theory, at the tirne, the Eightfold Way
was actually a representation of the group SU(3).
As more and more new particles were discovered, it seemed less and less likely that

they could al1 be considered as elementary. In 1964, Gell-Mann and George Zweig
independently proposed that mesons and baryons were not elementary particles at alI, but that
instead. they were made up of a mplet of fundamental particles cdled quarks. This triplet of
quarks corresponded to the fundamentai representation of SU(3). The success of the quark

mode1 was immediate, and it soon dowed for a shift in application of the V-A theory: it was
soon applied to quarks, instead of mesons and baryons.
Con-

to fist appearances, the Yang-Mills gauge theory, in a suitably modified

fom, eventually proved to be suitable for describing both the weak interactions, and the
strong interactions. In 1967, it was shown that the weak and electromagnetic interactions
could be unified under the group SU(2)xU(1), which underwent spontaneous symmetry

breakdown at energies available in the labofatory, and six years later, the strong interactions
were treated with the new exact symmetry of SU(3) colour, and the theory of quantum
chromodynamics (QCD) was bom. Shortly after that, theorists began to get excited about the

possibility of u n i h g all of the known fundamental interactions under a singie, g-

gauge

groupGauge symmetry has thus become a central feature of theoretical particle physics. In

fact, certain choices of unined symmetry groups imply the violation of the conservation of

baryon number. How did syrnmetry corne to hold such a pnvileged position? To evaluate its

changing role, we m u t examine how physicists have actually used the concept of symmetry,
and how relations between consemation laws and both space-tirne and intemal symmetries

have been manifested within the history of high energy physics.

II.

Symmetry, Invariance, and General Relativity (i 9 15-17)

To understand early ideas of symmetry in the development of elementary particle

physics, we need to explore how symmetry entered the discipline. This chapter is intended as
a prelude, an introduction to the ideas of symmetry and invariants as they existed in the early
twentieth century. It dso provides an historical sketch of generd relativity which wiIl fmish
the context for the beginning of our investigation.

1. Noether and invariants

In 1918, Emmy Noether proved a general relationship between symmetries and
conservation laws: every continuous symmetry of Nature yields a consemed quantity, and
every conservation law can be Linked to an underlying symmetry. Although much Iater, this

result became essential for particle physics, Noether developed it early in her career in a very
different context, the context of invariants.' Before moving to Gottingen in 1916, where she

worked with David Hilbert and F e h Klein, Noether had studied at Erlangen, where Klein had
inaugurated the Erlangen Programm of 1872. Although Klein had since le& he had kept up

his contacts there with Max Noether who was an important rnathematician in his own right,
apart fiom being Emmy's father.

The Erlangen Programrn of 1872 marked a break in the development of group theory.
Klein took the concept of a group, already present in the theory of algebraic equations, and he
used it to clas*

different geometries.'

In fact, he offered a new general definition of

geometry, as the science which studies the invariants of groups? A particdar geometry is
then d e k e d by its properes which remain invariant under a certain group of transformations.

For example, in Euclidean geometry, areas and lengths remain invariant under translations and
rotations in the plane. The theory of invariants of a symmetry group became familia to

physicists and mathematicians through the work of both Klein, and his fiiend and coileague,
the Norwegian Sophus Lie?

In 1916, Klein and Hilbert were working on relativiy at Gottingen, and they
welcomed Noether because of her expertise in invariant theory. It was due to their innuence
that she stayed?

Mos importandy for us, she published, m 1918, her paper on the problem

of invariance with respect to a group of transformations involving arbitrary fbnctions!

These

fnctions were identities that contained the conservation theorems of energy and momentum
in the case of invariance with respect to arbitrary transformations of the four worldcoordinates. She estabiished two theorems in her fundamental paper, one for f i t e groups,

and the other for infinite groups,'

(i)

If the variational integral is invariant under a finite continuous group G,,then p

lnearly independent combinations of the Lagrangian expressions become
divergences, and vice versa This theorem is also valid in the lirnit of infinitely
many parameters.

(ii)

If the variational integral is invariant under an infinite continuous group G,,, in

which arbitrary fimctions and their derivatives up to the order a appear, then p
identical relations are satisfied between the Lagrangiau expressions and their
denvatives up to the order a. The inverse of this theorem is also m e .

Thus, Noether estabiished a general equivalence beween invariance under symmetry

transformations of the action integral, and correspondhg relations between Lagrangian terms,
which imply conserved quazltities.' Her theorem did not gain widespread attention, however,
until after Eugene Wigner applied it to quantum mechanics? In Gottingen, bwever, these

results were important for Hilbert in his formulation of general relativity, as we s h d see.

2. Special relativity and the Lorentz group

Hendrk Lorentz, in 1904, showed that MaxweU's equations maintained their form
under the coordinate transformations,

provided the field intensities in the primed system are suitably c h o ~ e n - 'Lorentz
~
did not

think, however, that these equations were completely invariant. Because of the way he had
chosen to trmsform charge demity and cunent, he believed that his solution was only good to
a fxst order of approximation of v/c, and that second order quantities rnight show a
perceptible difference.
H~M
Poincar, however, believed in invariance of the electrodynamic equations. In

1905, he corrected Lorentz's formulae for the charge density A d curent, and he showed that
the field equations of electron theory kept the same mathematical form in the moving

coordinate system." Thus he demonstrated covariance under Lorentz transformations.

Further, he showed that the transformations which effect the transformation must form a
group, which he named the Lorentz g r ~ u p . ' ~
A more profound understanding of the entire problem was offered by Aibert Einstein,

who wrote his 1905 paper, "On the electrodynamics of moving bodies", without knowledge of
the work of either Lorentz or Poincar.

This paper derived previous results, and went beyond

it, through the introduction of two postulates,

(i)

... the sarne Iaws of electrodynamics and optics wiIl be valid for ail frames of
reference for which the equations of mechanics hold good.

(ii)

... light is always propagated in empty space with a definite velocity c which is
independent of the motion of the ernitting body."

The first postdate he referred to as the relutivity pnncQde. The second brought with it a new
meaning to simultaneity: events which are simdtaneous in one inertid m

e are not

necessarily simultaneous in another. Together, 'these two postulates M y specify the special
theory of relativity. Remarkably, both of them can be combined into the single requirement
that ali physical laws shodd be invariant under Lorentz transformations. From a

mathematical point of view, the special theory of relativity is the theory of invariants of the
Lorentz gr ou^.'^

This was cleariy demonstrated by Hermann Minkowski in 1908, using a clever new
formalism. He put space and time on an equal footing by replacing the time r, with an
imaginary quantity u=ict.15 He referred to a point in space and a particula. tirne, represented
by (x.y,z,u) as a world-point, and a path through space-time as a world-line. With his new
notation, we can see the similarity between the expression for length s in three-dimensional
space,
s = +J&

and its extension in the four-dimensional space-tirne manifold,

&?+y'+i+u'

(3

Although the two geometries are not identical because of the imaginary character of the time
coordinate,16 we see that the world geometry, or menic, is closely related to Euclidean
geometry. In the same sense that relation (2) is invariant under rotations in three-dimensional
-space, relation (3) is invariant under aD h e a r orthogonaI transformations in four dimensional
space-the. In other words, it is invariant under the Lorentz group." This invariance is

enough to demonstrate that the Iaws of physics are equally valid in ail neaial reference
systems, but Einstein was soon looking for ways to generalize his theory.

3. Einstein and generai relativity

i, The ~rincipleof eauivalence

The general theory of relativty grew out of an attempt to extend the principle of
relativity to include gravitation. In his 1907 review article on the special theory of relativity,

"The principle of relativify and its consequences", Einstein introduced his equivalence
principle, which suggested the equivalence between a gravitational field and an accelerated
fiame of reference,

... we shail therefore assume complete physical equivalence between the gravitational
field and the corresponding acceleration of the reference fiame."
This p ~ c i p l has
e serious implications: it implies that in a gravitational field, clocks nui

slower, and the velocity of light is no longer constant In fact, light rays become curved.
1911, Einstein calcdated the influence of gravitation on light, after he realized that the

deflection codd be measured e~perimentally.'~In this paper, Einstein showed that the
velocity of light varies as,

where & is the gravitational p ~ t e n t i a l . He

~ ~ dso rephrasd his equivalence principle,
This asnimption of exact physical equivalence makes it impossible for us to talle of the
absolute acceleration of the system of reference, just as the usuai theory of relativity
forbids us to talk of the absolute velocity of the system..?
This new phrasing of the equivalence principle implies that fiom the equivalence of an

accelerated name of reference and a different m e , at rest but subject to a homogenous field

of pvitation, the identity of inertial and gravitational masses can be denved? Lookig
back on this period, Einstein claimed that already he h e w that gravitation would have to lead

him beyond the Lorentz transformations, but he was not yet sure how faru

S.

il.

Invnance. conservation laws, and generd covariance

In the summer of 1912, when Einstein moved to Zrch, he began to search for the
mathematical structure of general relativity. By then, he had already convinced himseE of the

constraints on a theory of gravitation: it had to satisQ energy-momentum conservation,

gravitational and inertid masses within a closed system had to be equd, special relativity had
to

be a limiting case, and he did not want the laws of nature to depend upon the absolute

value of the gravitational p~tential.~~

Because he needed to use accelerated reference

fiames to describe gravitation, he realized that Euclidean geometry wouid no longer be

suitable, and that he would have to use diferentid geometry? At a conference in Vienna

in 1913, after stating these four constraints, Einstein went on to discuss the consequences
which would follow fiom the general invariance of the line element ds, given by,

(5)

+g&@e

where the symmetric tensor g,, represents the metrical dependence upon space tirne."

The

ten quantities gpvare interpreted as a characterization of the gravitational field, and they
replace the scalar potential @ of the Newtonian theory."

With his =end Marcel Grossrnann, who was a professor of mathematics, Einstein

studied the mathematical literature, especiaily the theory of invariants and the absolute

differential calculus of Ricci, Levi-Civia and christoffel? It tumed out that Bernhard

Riemann had dready discovered a geometry which obeyed relation (5)?

Einstein's task

was clear: he had to relate the invariants of this new geometry to his new phyncal principles.

He asked Grossrnann to help him find g e n e d y covariant tensors whose components

depended only upon derivatives of the coefficients of relation (S), and Grossmann
responded.)' Together, the two of them wrote a joint-paper in 1913, with two sections, a
physical part wrinen by Einstein, and a mathematical part M e n by ~rossmaa~l?'

In the mathematical section of the 1913 paper, Grossmann introduced covariant and
contravariant tensors, according to Ricci and Levi-Civita dong with two xts of quantities

built up nom derivatives of the metrc, known as ChnstoEeI ~ymbols,)~

and

He also ritroduced the Riemann-Christoffel tensor of the fourth rank,

and finally, he presented a second rank tensor, the Ricci tensor, which was a contraction of

the Riemann-Christoffel tensor.

In his section of the paper, Einstein gave the physical reasoning. He used the

Christoffel symbols right away in his analysis of the motion of a materiai point in the field of
gravitation. He considered the motion of a point of matter in a gravitational field,

6 ds-0

from which he derived the geodesic equation,

This expression is covariant, as expected. Next, Zinstein attempted to derive the field
equations. He guessed that the field equations should take the fonn of a g e n e r b t i o n of the
Newton-Poisson equation,

where k is the gravitational constant, and p, is the rest density of matter- Einstein Iooked for
an expression of the form,

where O,, is the covariant energy tensor,

is a constant, and the field term I?,

is an as yet

undetermined covariant tensor of the second order which is to be constructeci fiom differential
operations out of the metric tensor g,. Grossmann, in tum, emphasized the importance of the

tensors in his section,

The ovemding significance of these structures [tensors] for the differential geometry of
a manifold, denned by its Iine element, makes it a prion probable, that these g e n d
differential tensors could also be important for the problem of the differential
equations of the gravitationai field?
Grossmann thought that the Ricci tensor R,, would be a good candidate to enter the field
equations because it was second rank, like the metric, and Iike the Newton-Poisson law, it
contained second order derivatives. Unforhmately, he went on to add,

... this tensor, in the special case of an infinitely weak gravitational field, would not
reduce to the expression A~#LWe must therefore leave open the question as to what
extent the gened theory of the differential tensors linked with the gravitational field is
related to the problem of the equations of gravitation?
With the Ricci tensor d e d out, Einstein was p b l e to determine a tensor I
', which reduced

to At$ i the Newtonian limit, and which was a tensor under arbitrary transformations.

Einstein was forced to make a choice between these two conditions, and he chose the frstSubsequently, he restricted r,, to covariance with respect to h e a r tcansformations only.
Thus, he abandoned general covariance of the field equations,

... [we] must therefore abstain fkom seting up equations of gravitation which would
tum out to be covaraut with respect to arbitrary transformations. Moreover it must be
ernphasized that we have no clue regarding a general covariance of the equations of

gravitation?
Later that same year, Einstein believed that he had found a proof of the physical
unacceptability of the generally covariant field equaons, based upon a consideration of the
conservation of energy?

Upon generalization of the energy tensor T,,nom special

relativity in a gravitational field with varying g,, Einstein found that T,,alone was not
conserved, but the total energy was still conserved, as stiown by an equation involving tensor

This conservation is made possible by the appearance of a new tensor t", which Einstein
interpreted as the energy tensor of the gravitational field. Einstein justified this new tensor by
saying that it represents the physical fact that the gravitational field transports energy to the
matenal system? This had important consequences,
Since we demand the validity of the conservation laws, we restrict the reference fkme
to the correspondhg extent, and thereby renounce the sethg up of the equations of
gravitation in general covariant form."
In this initial sketch (En-

of the theory, Einstein had relied on his physical intuition, and

mathematical concepts had played a smaller role thau might have k e n expected. In fact,
Einstein wrote to his riend Michele Besso in March 1914, "The general theory of invariants

acted a s an obstacle. The direct way turned out to be the only one practi~able."~~

Einstein was happy, for the moment, that the conservation Iaws led to this condition,
more redctive than generai covariance, but this feeling did not Iast long. He realized the

following year, in 1914, that the key to extending relativity was not to be found by simply
incorporating gravitation into the special theory of relativity, but rather by using gravitation as
a means of breaking away fkom the privileged position of covariance for unifonn relative

motion, and gaiing covariance for general motion? He wrote a second paper &th
Grossmann, in which they reexamined general covariance? In the introduction, they
stressed that the field equations had to be covariant under both nonlinear coordinate
transformations as weIl as linear coordinate transformations if the theory were to contain an
extension of the principle of relativity and the principle of equivaience. They were looking

for field equations which had the highest degree of covariance possible, while stiIl completely
determinhg the g,,

... the gravitation equations set up by us have that degree of general covariance which
is conceivable under the condition that the fiindamental tensor g,, should be
compietely determined by the gravitation equations, in paaicular, it ninis out that the
gravitation equations are covariant under acceleration transformations (that is,
nonluiear tratlsformations) of many different kindinds4'
In an attempt to prove this, they derived four conditions which indicated the level of
covariance available, by showing which tratlsformations of the coorduizte system would be
justified."

They were,

where g is the determinant of the metric tznsor. These conditions were interpreted by using a

variational principle,
J

where H is interpreted as the HamiItonian of the gravitational field, and it is set using the

previous conditions just derived,

The allowed coordinate systems can then chosen such that, for the fixed boundary values of
the coordinates and their derivatives, the integraI J approaches an extremum?

Einstein and

Grossmann then conclude,

... since the conditions &=O, with the help of which we have restncted the coordinate
systems, are the immediate consequences of the equations of gravitation, our
considerations show that the covariance of the equations is as far reaching as
possible?
Einstein soon changed his mind, and admitted that he had made a mistake. The

following year, in the first of a series of three papers presented to the Prussian Academy in
November 1915, he admitted that the field equations were no? uniquely deterrnined by the

restricted covariance, and these conditions were not enough to detennine the Hamiltonian
function either? All they were capable of doing, he realized, was limiting the choice of H
to invariance under linear transformations, which was not enough for a relativity of
accelerated motions."

Einstein finally realized that the gravitational field equations do not

determine the g,, ~uiambiguously,but this does not ruin general covariance! He renewed the
search for field equations, except by this time, he had,

"...reverted to the requirement of the

general covariance of the field equations, which Be] abandoneci ody with a heavy heart in
the first place three years ago...ri48

A week after the three presentations, on 25 November 19 15, Einstein presented his
fuial, correct form of the field equations. The most important change was that the equations

were no longer expressed in the artificial foms he had introduced before. Instead, he codd
use the naturally suited Ricci tensor,

where T=T, Einstein demanded, as before, that the conservation of energy was satisfied,

but this tirne, he interpreted the energy of the gravitational field

r, differently than before.

This collection of quantities f, is necessary, since the curvature of space does not d o w for a

conservation of Pmalone, but it is not a tensor at aii: it only behaves We one under h e a r
transformations. Einstein concluded the paper triumph~illtly~
With that, the general relativity is fiaiiy compIeted as a logicd structure. In its most
general formulation, which turns the space-time coordinates into parameters devoid of
physical significance, the principle of relativity concludes, with conclusive necessity, to
a quite definite theory of gravitation-.-49

Early the next year, in 1916, Einstein gave an almost complete account of general
relativiv, his paper, "The foundations of the theory of general relativity". He explaineci

clearly that it was not enough to consider arbitrarily moving reference systems, but that all
coordinate systems must be allowed.

The generai laws of nature are to be expressed by equations which hold good for ail
systems of coordinates, that is, are covariant with respect to any substitutions
whatever?'
This ailows for a natural explmation of gravitation. The elements of the metric tensor gpv

which allow the general transformations are interpreted as the gravitational potentials, and
they determine the curvature of space, the amount of curvature being proportional to the

gravitational force,

... according to the general theory of relativity, gravitation occupies an exceptional

position with regard to other forces particularly the electromagnetic forces, since the
ten functions representing the gravitational field at the same tne d e h e the metricai
properties of the space meanned?

This dlows the fusion of two previously quite disconnected subjects, gravitaiion and
geometry,

4. Hilbert and the axomatic method

In November 1915, ive days before Einstein's presentation of his field equations,
David Hilbert presented covariant equations of gravitation as part of an attempt towards a
d e d theory of electromagnetic and gravitational fields?

Hilbert's approach, however,

was very different. Unlike Einstein, who had sought covariant equations of gravitation using

conservation laws as a guide, Hilbert was developing a d e d physical theory, using an

axiornatic method relying on the methods of the variational calculus, and the theories of
continuou transformation groups and invariants. By combining the ideas of Einstein's theory
of gravitation with Gustav Mie's theory of matter, Hilbert hoped to unite gravitation and
electromagnetism.
Gustav Mie had made an attempt to constnict a field theory of matter based upon
electromagnetism in 1912-13." He attempted to descnbe ail phenornena using a nonlinear
electrodynamics, in which matter could be interpreted as spatial concentrations of charge
brought about by extremely intense electromagnetic fields."

Mie introduced a system of ten

universal fnctions of the electromagnetic fields E,B, and the electromagnetic potential+.
Under the restrictions of energy conservation and Lorentz covariance, these ten b c t i o n s

could be expressed in terras of a single fnction H, the world-fiinctioa."

By applying

Hamilton' s principle,

6 H dxdydzdt-0

(19)

the field equations can then be determined? The problem is thus reduced to f'hding the

form of this world-function, but this problem is obviousIy extremely W c d t Mie tried
many combinations of invariants without success, eventudy giving up." Nevertheiess,
Hilbert found Mie's work inspiring.

Hilbert incorporated Mie's vision of the world-fiinction within the mathematics of the
general theory of relativty. Starting nom a Riemannian geometry, Hilbert postulated that any

physical event at a point w i t h the space-time manifold codd be completely characterized by

the ten gravitational potentials g,, dong with the four etectrodynamic potentials q, which

codd then be determined using only two axioms:

(i)

(Mie's axiom of the world fiindon)

The laws of physics are determined by the world-fhction H, containing the
arguments,

such that the variation of the integrai,

d

vanishes for any of the 14 potentials g,,, and q,?

(ii)

(Axiorn of general invariance)

The world-bction H is an invariant with respect to an arbitrary trandormation
of the coordinates wYs9

Hilbert thought that his axiom (ii) was the simplest expression of Einstein's fiuidamental idea

of general covariance, and he added that Einstein did not write the axiom in this way because,

... for Einstein, Hamilton's principle ody plays a secondas. role, and his fiinction H in
no way consists of general invariants and does not contain the electric potential~.~
Hiibert then offered his first theorem,

If the expression J is invariant urider arbitrary transformations of the four worldparameters, and contains n quantities and theV derivatives, and if fkom the conditions,

then n Lagrange variational equations for these n equations are formed, then in this
invariant system of n differential equati~ns~
four of them are always a consequence of
the remaining n-4 equations, in the sense that four mutually independent linear
combinations of these n dfffkrentiai equations and their derivatives are aiways
identicdy satisfedbl
Hilbert m e s this theorem without proof, but it is a consequence of Noether's second
theorem, which she proved in 1918P2 It shows that there are four relations between the n
fields under variation, and Hilbert thought that this theorem connected the laws of gravitation

and the laws of electrodynamics. He let J correspond to his world-hction, which depends
on 1014 fields, namely, the gravitational potentials g,, and the electromagnetic potentials q,
Cunously, Hilbert did not take ali of these equations to have an equal statu. Instead, he
argued that the gravitationai equations were fundamental, and that the electromagnetic
equations were a consequence (Folgeerscheinung)of gravitation?.

Einstein was very criticai of this method. He sharply cnticized Hilbert in a postcard to
Ehrenfest in May 1916,
1 do not like Hilbert's formulation. It is needlessly specialized and, as far as matter is
concerned, unnecessarily compiicated It is not honest ... in design [and indicates] the

pretension of a superman by a camouflage of techniques?

Einstein was not alone. Hilbert's method was not regarded as acceptable by most physicists
at the tirne, because the variational principle was introduced as a . axiom, and variational

methods were not yet not well-established?

The question persiste4 for a few years, whether the theones of Hilbert and Einstein
were identical. In 1916, Einstein published a paper on Hamilton's principle in which he tried

to cl-

the connection between Hilbert's formulation and his own, which he thought to be

the simpler of the two,

...in contrast to [the work 04 Hilbert, as few restrictive assumptions as possible about
the constitution of matter will be made. On the other han& contrary to my own
previous paper, the choice of the coordinate system shaiI rernain perfectly fie@

When Einstein was questioned about the physical interpretations of generai relativity, he
tended to place a formal energy consemation law in the forefiont, because in his earlier
procedure, fidl covariance looked rather d~ubtful.~'Conversely, Hilbert tried to exploit
covariance physically. Ultimately, it was Felc Klein who completed the qbthesis of the
views of Einstein and Hilbert?

Klein's work is closely connected with Noether's theorem,

also published in 1918- Klein concluded that both Hilbert's constraint condition for he

energy tensor of matter and Einstein's conservation of energy-rnomentum both fouowed fiom

general covariancePg Nowadays, Hilbert's conditions are thought of as conditions for the

curvahire tensor Rup,A,or more precisely, the contracted Ricci tensor R, which enters the
equations of gravitation. These conditions were written in 1902 by Klein's former pupil,
Luigi Bianchi,
~ ; v * ;

r+qL;

;*-O

(21)

or in their contracted form and combined with fi

1
( I V v - - g v R ) v=O
2

(22)
These four equations may be interpreted as either the four identities of Hibert or the energy

conservation equations of Einstein, since each share the fom of the field eqyations. Thus,
Hilbert's theorem actualiy referred to a part o f the Bianchi identities which can be derived

fiom purely geometxical considerati~ns?~

5. Concluding rernarks

The concept of a classical field was developed significantly with the elaboration of the
general theory of relativity in 1915. AIthough it was constnicted as a relativistic theory of the

gravitational field, the generai theory of relativity was more than just another theory of
gravity. It was a new theory o f space and time that differed fkom all other physical theories

in uiat it geometrized a physical interaction: the gravitational field was interpreted as the
manifestation of space-time curvature while space-he was identified with a physical field

whose equations were determined by the distribution of matter. Because of its appeal, it
induced others to seek a d a r construction which could represent both the gravitational field

and the electromagnetic field. The first effort, as we have seen, was made by Hilbert in

191 5. A few years iater, in 1918, an attempt was made by his former student, Hennarui
Weyl.?' This is where our story begins.

1.

Weyl

career .

(1935) provides

a heartfelt discussion of Noether' s

Klein and Lie met in Berlin in 1870, and then they both moved
[Yaglom
Paris, where they worked under Camille Jordan.
(1988), p. 221

4.

to

5,
Hilbert tried to push through Noetherfs application for
Habili t a t i o n in the Philosophy Faculty at Gottingen.
At a
Eaculty meeting, he declared, "1 do not see that the sex of the
candidate is an argument against h e r admission as Privatdozent,
After all, we are a University and not a bathing e~tablishment.~
Even so, he failed. [Weyl (19351, p. 431.1

6.

Noether (1918).

7.

Noether (1918). pp. 2 3 8 - 3 9 -

(1974) notes that Car1 Jacobi, in 1 8 4 2 , had already

connection between the Euclidean invariance of the
mechanical Lagrangian, and the conservation laws for linear and
angular momentum in 1842, and that in 1897, J. R. Schtz derived
energy conservation from the symmetry p r i n c i p l e .
Further. in
1 9 0 4 , unaware of t h e work of hFs predecessors, G , Hame1 also
exploited the connection between symmetry transformations and
conserved quantities.
He
derived the result
that
the
coefficients in the Lagrange equations are constants if the
related infinitesimal transformations generate a symmetry group,
and if the coefficients are constants, then the conservation laws
are s a t i s f i e d . [Mehra (1974), p. 21-22. 701
Noether' s theorem.
however, is the most general result.
8,

Mehra

found

As Mehra (1974) points out. Noether's theorem has a much

simpler form i n quantum theory, due to the fact that the
commutator replaces the more complicated Poisson bracket . [Mehra
9.

(19741, p . 231

10. Lorentz (1904), p. 14.

Note that to obtain equation (1)
from Lorentz's corresponding expression, it is necessary to
substitute x-vt for x, since Lorentz has already made the
Pauli (1921) points out that
transition to the moving system.
J - J. Larmor had already found equivalent transformations i n
I9OO. [Pauli (1921) p. 21

Il.

See Poincar (1905)-

Pauli p o i n t s out t h a t the terms "Lorentz t r a n s f ~ r r n a t i o nand

~~
"Lorentz groupn appeared f o r the first timc in this paper, which
~oincar communicated to the Acadmie des Sciences on June 5,
1905. [Pauli (1921, p. 3.1
L a t e r that same month, on June 30,
~instein's first paper on relativity was received by the Annalen
der Physik- In it, Einstein stated that parallel transformations
necessarily form a group [Einstein (1905), p - 907-1
12.

13 .

Einstein (1905), pp- 37-38

14.

Pauli (19211, p.. 21.

16.
This implies, f o r instance, t h a t t w o world-points whose
distance f r o m each o t h e r is zero do not coincide-

In contrast to the notions of translational and r o t a t i o n a l

invariance i n three-dimensions, Lorentz invariance is not
irnmediately obvious. It can be made more apparent by a suitable
choice of variables- In three-space, rotations look like,
17.

x, ' =x, cosw-x,sinw

x,'=x, sino+x,cosw
Pure Lorentz trinsformations may be put i n the f o m

xIr=x,coshw-ix,sinhw
x, =ix, sinhotx,coshw
with coshw=l/ (1-B) 35 and sinho=B/ (1-6)36. [Sakurai (1964), p. 201

Einstein (lgO7), p - 454.

Mehra (19741, p -

4-

Einstein (1911).

Einstein (1911), p. 100 Mehra (1974), p . 4 .

Pais (l982), p - 2 0 4 -

Mehra (19741, p. 9 Pais (19821, p - 211Mehra (1974), p - 10

In four dimensional space time, g,,

numbers, because it is a symmetric tensor,
r

dimensions,

%n(n+l)=IO28.

Mehra (1974), p. 9.

is defined
g,,=gv,, and for n=4

29.

Riemann (1854, 1861)-

30-

Pais (182), p - 212-

3 1-

Einstein and Grossmann (1913)-

These symbols w e r e named for E l w i n Christoffel. who

formulated t h e m in la69 while looking f o r t h e conditions under
which gikdddxk can be transformed i n t o gr~dxridxrk.
[Pauli (1921),
p. 431
The system of quantities P,,is not a tensor:
in the
general case it contains 64 components. If it is required to be
symmetrical, the number of basic variables is reduced f r o m
64 to 4 0 32.

33.

Einstein and Grossmann (1913), p . 257-

34-

Einstein and Grossmann ( 1 9 1 3 ) ~p , 2 5 7 ,

35 -

Einstein and G r o s s m a m (1913), p, 261.

36-

Einstein ( 1 9 1 3 )

37 -

Mehra (1974). p - 11-

38 -

Einstein (1913), p - 1258

39.

Quoted in Mehra (19741, p - 1 3 -

40.

Pais (1982), p - 228.

41 -

Einstein and Grossmann (1914).

42.

Einstein and Grossmann ( 1 9 1 4 ) ~p . 216.

43.

Mehra (l974), p. 13 -

44.

Mehra (l974), p - 13.

45

46
See

Einstein and Grossmann ( 1 9 1 4 ) ~p. 225,

The three papers were given on 4, 11, and 18 November 1915Einstein (1915a, 1915b, 1 9 1 5 ~ -)

47.

Einstein (1915a), p. 778

48.

Einstein (1915a), p. 778 -

49

Einstein (1915d), 8 4 7 ,

50.

Einstein (1916a), p . 117.

51-

Einstein (1916a1, p . 120-

52.
Hilbert presented his equations in Gottingen five days
before Einstein' s presentation.
Mehra (1974) gives a thorough
discussion of the relation between the work of Einstein and
Hilbert- Einstein and Hilbert had a great deal of mutual respect
for each other, and they communicated quite frequently in 1915 Hilbert refexenced Einstein thoroughly, and in fact, because his
paper, Wrundlagen der Phyik " took a few weeks to be published,
Hilbert
was
able to refer to al1 four of Einstein's
Although very proud of his
communications of November 1915independent derivat ion, Hilbert himself considered Einstein to be
the principal architect of general relativity,

53-

Mie (1912a, 1912b, 1913).

54-

Mehra (19741, p - 23-

55.
B o t h Mie and Weyl (1922) refer to the function H as a
Hamiltonian, since it is used in conjunction w i c h Hamilton's
principle.
Dirac (1933) spelled out the advantage of using a
Lagrangian with the action principle instead of a Hamiltonian:
it makes the action a relativistic invariant.
56-

Mie (1912a1, p . 527,

57.
One of the most serious difficulties, as Pauli (1921)
emphasized, was the fact that Mie's theory rested upon an
absolute potential.
The equations of motion do not rernain
unchanged if one replaces the potential @ by @+constant.
This
problem, already noticed by Mie, m e a n s that a material particle
c a m o t exist in a constant external potential field58. The scalar density dg, characteristic of general relativity,
simply ensures the invariance of the integral with respect to
coordinate transformations.
59.

Hilbert ( l 9 X S )

p 396.

60,

Hilbert (lglS), p 396-

61- Hilbert (1915), p. 397.

62.

Mehra (19741, p - 2 7 -

63.
Hilbert (19151, p . 4 0 6 In addition, Hilbert saw a deep
afinity between general relativity, and Miers Zheory . Hilbert
broke the world function up into two parts, H=K+L, where K is the
gravitational part, and L is the electromagnetic part. Re could
relate L directly to the work of Mie, "Mie's electromagnetic
energy tensor is thus none other than the knvariant tensor
obtained by differentiating the invariant L with respect to the
gravitational
potentials
g,,
on
the
passage
to
the
limit . " [ H i l b e r t (1915), p . 4041

64-

Mehra ( 1 9 7 4 1 , p. 3 5 -

Mehra ( 1 9 7 4 ) points that many of these prejudices against

v a r i a t i o n a l methods were r e m o v e d after their use in quantum
mechanics became popular. Today, H i l b e r t ' s procedure of asuming
a H a m i l t o n i a n principle is w e l l j u s t i f i e d .
Mehra quotes J. L.
Anderson (1967) as saying, "Today most physicists would be not
only w i l l i n g to accept as axiomatic the existence of a
v a r i a t i o n a l p r i n c i p l e but w o u l d also be l o a t h to accept any
dynamical
equations that were not derivable from such a
p r i n c i p l e .If [Mehra (1974), p. 771
65.

66.

E i n s t e i n (1916b), p.

67.

M e h r a (19?4), p. 4 5 .

68.

Mehra ( 1 9 7 4 ) , pp. 4 5 - 5 0 .

70.

M e h r a (1974). p. 4 9 .

1111-

See as0 P a i s (1982) , pp- 274-78.

71.
W e y l w a s a m a t h e m a t i c i a n , a student of H i l b e r t educated a t
G o t t i n g e n , where he tudied and taught for a l m o s t t e n y e a r s ( f r o m
1 9 0 4 t o 1 9 1 3 w i t h a break of a year, w h e n he was at Munich) .
From 1 9 1 3 t o 1 9 3 0 , he taught at Z r i c h .
There he met Einstein,

although i n 1 9 1 4 , E i n s t e i n moved t o Berlin.

III. The Origins o f Gauge Theory

(1918-25)

1. Weyl's gauge theory (19 18)

Einstein's theory of general relativity provided a natural interpretation of gravitation,

but concerning matter itselc it was less wmplete, as the controversy with Hilbert had shown.
Gravity and electromagnetism were isolated fkom each other. Once the success of Einstein's

gravitational theory was established, however, there were a number of attempts to generalize it
even M e r . The frst who stepped forward, in 1918, was Hermann WeyI, a student of
HiIbert and a successor of the Gottingen tradition of mathematical physics. Weyl proposed
nothng less than a new geometry, and a unified theory of gravitation and electricity, which
were the only known fiindamental forces at the tirne. He was &er a pure innnitesimal

geometry, as he called it, based on the idea of parailel transfer, an idea within differential

geometry which had been developed by Tullio Levi-Civit in 1917.

In 1918, Weyl made an effoa to extend the general theory of relativity to include
eleceomagnetism as well as gravitation. As in Einstein's general theory, the square of the
distance between two infitesimally separated points, as before, takes a quaciratic Merential

form,

*g;&dr,

(1)

in which the gik are identified with the ten components of the gravitationai potential. In
addition, Weyl introduces a linear form which he identifies with the four components of the

electromagnetic potential 6,
d4-b,&

(2)

Weyl's unification is made within the context of an extension of Riemannian geometry based

not simply upon the metic, but upon the idea of the concept of paraiiel tramfier, dscovered
by Levi-Civit in 1917.' If P and P r are two points comected by a cuve, then one can
transfer a vector from P to P ' dong the c w e , keeping it parallel to itself.

In general,

however, this transfer of the vector is not integrable, that is, the vector that is obtained at

point P' depends upon the path taken from point P. The two vectors, in general, will not
coincide. Instead, they wiil have some angle separating them, where the aagle depends on the
curvature of space-the in the region enclosed by the two pathd

Weyl thought that Einstein's theory contahed a residual element of rigid geometry,

simply due to the historical accident that it developed out of Euclidean geometry? Weyl
noted that the metric aUows the magnitudes of two vectors to be compared, not only at the
same point, but also at any two arbitrarly separated points. He thought that since fiection
was non-integrable, length should be as well.
A true infinitesimal geometry should, however, recognize only a principle for
tramferring the magnitude of a vector to an innnitenmally close point and then,
on transfer to an arbitrady distant point, the integrability of the magnitude of a
vector is no more to be expected than the integrability of its direction?

Weyl suggested that this new degree of fieedom would aliow his geometry to exphin not only
gravitation, but also electromagnetiun The two forces would become uitertwined.

On the removal of this inconsistency, thete appears a geometry that, surprisingly, when
applied to the world, explains not only the gravitational phenornena but also the
electrcal. According to the resuitant theory, both spring fkom the same source, indeed
in general one cannot separate gravitation and electromagnetism in an arbitrary
manner?
Weyl d o w s non-integrability of length by suggesting an invariance of scale, or
measure. His plan is to then relate electromagnetism to this new kind of invaciance, just as

Einstein related gravitation to the invariance with respect to general continuous

transformations of the space-the coordinates. Under p d e l tramfer, the change dEi of the
vector E, when transported nom point P to point P' is given by,

where the dy: are linear differentid forms,

dy

S-C ris&,

(41

and the Christoffel symbols show the symmetry property I",=

Ifc
two vectors

and

at

P are pardel transfened to ci+dt' and $+dqr at P ', then their scaiar product at P r ,

must be proportional to their scalar product at Py

This proportionality factor is taken to be infinitesimal and set to (l+@), giving the equation,
dg,-

(dy,+dy,)

-g&@

(7)

From this, we see that dc$ is a linear form, as s h o w in equation (2). Under this application

of parallel tramfer, Weyl has shown thaf

"... the intemal metrical connection (Ma~zusummenhang)of space thus depends not
only on the quadratic form (which is determined up to an arbitrary coefficient of
proportionaiity), but aiso on the hear fo
Thus, the space is characterized by both the quadratic form dF2 and the linear form d&.

This Iinear form ailows a change in the scale of the coordinates. For Weyl, it is n o w
possible to compare lengths of vectors oniy if they are measured at one and the same point
Moreover, it is no longer the actual values of the g
, that c m be detemiined by measurements,

but rather, only the ratios or the relations between them. This leaves a freedom of s a l e for
the potentials ,
g

and so the coordinate system must be unchanged if the g, are replaced by

hg, where X can be taken as a function of position. Substituthg Ag, in equation (7) gives,

This allows an extra set of transformations,'

'
,
s

-As,

These are transformations of scale, or measme, and Weyl referred to the invariance they

fumish as scale invariance (Mapstab-Imarimz)). h the English literature, this invarknce

became known as gauge invariance.'
Weyl remarks that these transformations leave the eIectromagnetic field tensor
invariant,

because under transformation, the derivatives of the extra term of

+ ' cancel out.

He thinks

that, "...accordingly, it is very suggestive to interpret @, as the electromagnetic p~tential."~

Thus, under Weyl's new interpretation, Einstein's gravitational theory is only exact in the
absence of an eiectromagnetic field."

These transformations, together with the arbitrary continuous transformations of the

general theory of relativity, are the basis of Weyl's theory. For Weyl, these tratlsformatiom
have a defuiite geometrical rneaning, as the arbitrariness in the choice of the potential is

associated with the arbitrariness in the choice of the scale for measuring length.
Thus, Weyl is linking both gravitation and electromagnetism with the structure of the
underlying differential geometry. This geometry is not ody metrical, but also @ne, that is,
the vectors within the space are invariant under a multipLication altering their length."

This

affine space demonstrates both the usual invariance under coordinate transformations, and the

additional invariance under s d e ra&ormatiom.

Remember that Weyl's motivation is that physcal laws should not depend on what
unit of measure is chosen at each point Therefore, accordmg to Weyl's new p ~ c i p l e ,

physical laws shouid be independent of how the A&)

h c t i o n is chosen, which means that the

laws need to depend upon the metrk gik and the form t& in such a way that the changes
induced by the variation in each must cancel each other out, leaving the equations of motion
invariant Only then is there a d

e invariance of the physical Law

Weyl's theory, besides being aesthetidy pleasing, also provides a natural formulation
of the conservation of electric charge. Following the example of Mie's theory, which Weyl
references, the action is written,

where Weyl c a s W the action density.12 Weyl writes that the actuai world is selected fkom
the class of all possible worlds by the fact that the action is extremai in every region with

respect to the variations of the g, and & which vanish on the boundary of that region. Weyl
then shows that, as Hilbert, Einstein, and Klein had shown previously,

... Cjust as] the four conservation laws of matter (the energy-momentum tensor) are
connected with the invariance of the action quantity, expressed through four
independent functions, so Hi the same way the law of conservation of electricity is
connected with the new scale invarianceyexpressed through a fifth arbitrary
h c t i o n . l3
This is because under the variations,

the integral (12) vanishes. Weyl was very impressed with this. In fact, he felt that this was

one of the strongest arguments in favour of this theory,

The manner in which the latter resembles the prhcples of energy and
momentum seems to me one of the strongest generd arguments in favour of the
present theory-so far as there can be any question at d of confinnation withh
the context of pure speculation."
It turned out very soon that the theory was not purely speculative: it had experimental
consequences which Einstein quickly spotted.''

Einstein was allowed to write a supplement to Weyl's paper, in which he noted that
the indeterminate factor in the line element rls, as weiI as in the metric g,k should be subject to

memement. Accordingly, both Iengths of rods and rates of clocks should be dependent on
their history, implying that chernical elements with spectral-lines of definite frequency should

not exist and the relative fkequency of two n e i g h b o h g atoms of the same khd should be
different in general. Einstein concluded,
Since this is not the case, it seems to be that the basic hypothesis of this theory is,
unfortunately, unacceptable, although its depth and daring must delight any reader.16
Weyl answered Einstein in his conclusion to the paper, and he attempted to eliminate the
difficulty. He admitted that when a dock or an atom experiences a strongly varykg

electromagnetic field, the quantities g, and 4, are affecte& but be thought that this should net
matter since these quantities are not directly measurable. In Weyl's opinion, one can only

speak with confidence about measurements made in a static gravitational field and in the
absence of an electromagnetic field, and so his theory was not in conflict with experiment,
It m u t be borne in mind that the mathematically ideai process of parallet transport,
which must form the basis of the mathematical construction of geometry, does not bear
any relation to the real process of the motion of a clock, the rate of which is
determined by the laws of nature.'?
Aithough this reasoning allowed Weyl to defend his theory against its discrepancy with
experiment, by the same token, it also isolated it fiom physical content. Therefore his theory

only provided formal, not physical, evidence for a comection between gravitation and

In the next two years, Weyl refined his argument to deal with ths problem, aamely,
the non-uitegrability of distance under paralle1 transfer. He explained why clocks and rods

did not expenence a parallel transfer fkom moment to moment, by distinguishing two modes
of detemiining a quantity in Nature, that of persistence (Behaming), and adjustment

We can give to the axis of a rotating top any arbitrary direction in space. This
arbitrary original direction then determines for aU time the direction of the axis of the
top when left to itself, by means of a tendency of persistence which operates nom
moment to moment; the axis experiences at every instant a parailel displacement. The
exact opposite is the case for a magnetic needle in a magnetic field. Its direction is
determined at each instant uidependently of the condition of the system at other,
instants by the fact that, in vimie of its constitution, the system a&usts itself in an
unequivocdy detennined manner to the field in which it is situated- A priori we have
no ground for asniming as integrable a t r a d e r which results purely fiom the tendency
of per~istence.~'
Weyl thought that his theory predicted how vectors and lengths would behave if they

happened to follow their tendency of persistence, but in actual fact, it was quite possible that
just as the magnetic needle adjusts itself to the magnetic field, the rates of clocks and lengths

of rods couid adjust themselves to the curvature of the mettic. As a result, there is a doubling
of geometry: there is the original geometry of the space-time continuum in which the parallel
transfer happens, and there is the natural geometry, which is constnicted from the readings of

measuring instruments.2' Within the natural geometry, a d j m e n t to the curvature rnakes

the onginal idhitesimal geomeay unobservable. Of course, the only way to determine to

what extent persistence and a d j m e n t modify one another is to start fkom the physicai laws

as they actuaUy hold."

With this addition, Weyl's theory becomes signincantly more

complicated, losing the simplicity and attraction of the original theory?

2. Kaluza and the five-dimensional theory (1921)

The German mathematician Theodor Kaluza agreed with Weyl that in generd
relativity, a full description of the physics can only be obtained by taking the electromagnetic
four-potential qi into account dong with the gravitatiod potentials g,

In 1921, Kaluza

presented a unification attempt of his own, achieved by a different methodz4 Whereas Weyl
had introduced a linear form into the Riemannian geometry which he associated with
electromagnetism, Kaluza found a way to give a unified description of gravitation and
elec&ornagnetism in the fiamework of Riemannian geometry by using five dimensions, rather
than four. KaIuza envisioned gravitation and electromagnetism both arising, in the same way,

fkom a five-dimensional metric tensor,

Kaluza noticed a mathematical structural similarity between the tensor of
electromagnetic field strengths,

and the Christoffel symbols,

which suggested to him that the F,, might somehow be tnincated (verstlimmelte) Christoffel
symbols r,,?

In four-dimensional space, the r,, are purely gravitational, being built up

of the metric tensor and its denvatives. Kaluza thought that a unincation of gravitation and
electromagoetism might be possible with the introduction of the rather strange idea of a fifth

space-tirne dimension? There is nothing wrong with this addition of an extra dimension,

since Kaluza ensures that oniy four-dimensional variations of physicd quantities d l play a
physicd role. He achieves this by imposing a restriction: al1 derivatives with respect to the
fifth space-time coordinate must be either zero, or at least, a smaller order of magnitud than
the others. He c d s this the cylinder condition (~~lindrrbedingung)-"This does not mean,

of course, that the effects of the fifth-dimension are canceiied out, because of the way in
which the coordinates are embedded in the Cbristoffel symbols?

Kaluza worked with a five-dimensional Riemannian space R,, with coordinates

x0,x1&?,x4

(the

f
&

coordinate is xO), with metric tensor g, and Christoffel symbols ri,,

Taking into account the cylinder condition, he wrote down all the values of ri, in tems of
the derivatives of g,.'9 Besides the 40 four-dimensionai ri, describing the gravitationai
field, there were dso 35 new three-index quantties: 16 rt,, 10 rom4 r,,

ro,

and 1 r,,

of the form,
ri.EWa.r-gr~.J
ro,=~(.!?o,.r+&.r)

~,.oo=-

%O.i

,or
2 r,,-,,,,=O

Kaluza thought the results, at first, did not look aii that encouraging. Besides the sixteen
quantities ,'I

which appear as vector culs, the,,'I

interpretation according to the scheme,

which shouid have an electromagnetic

"...threaten to become a h . i n W ~ e . "Nevertheless,

~~

Kaluza continued. Because it ensures the proportionality of F, and r,,, Kaluza thought that

it was naturai to ident-

the four components of the electromagnetic potentid q, with the four

components g, of the five-dimensional metnc tensor. The signifcance of the final, corner
component g, remained undeterrnned, for the time beihg.

Kaluza was encoinaged that he codd decompose the m e e n components of the

curvature tensor into ten gravitational field equations, four electromagnetic field equatiom,

and a Poisson equation for the undetermined metrical component g,.

'This provides a fkst justification for our Ansatz and for the hope of interpreting the

gravitational and electromagnetic fields as components of a uaiversal field?'

Kaluza then attempted to find the equations of motion for charged particles in gravitational
and electromagnetic fields. In m

g to solve the equations, he was forced to make two

approximations. F h t , he asnimes the fields are weak, with g, which are close to their
Euclidean values. Second, he assumes a small five-velocity, v/c

1, with a srnail electnc

charge. He is able to write down a geodesic equation,

If his second approximation were to correspond to reality, this would be a satisfactory

soIution to the unification probIem, because he would'obtain a single metric generating a
universal field, which under ordinary conditions would split into a gravitational field and an

electromagnetic field Unfortunately, as Kaluza recognized, this is not the case for matter.
This is because matter, in its fundamentai constituents (Urteilchen), is not at al1 weakly
charged, or slow moving. Kaluza quotes Weyl, "...macroscopic placidity stands in sharp
contrast to microscopic turbulence.""

For an electron, in particular, the velocity is anything

but small. In addition, the charge-to-mass ratio of the electron is so high, that upon

substitution into the geodesic equation, terms involving g, are dominant rather than
45

negligible.

Kaluza realized that a signifcant modification of the theory would be needed to

describe microscopie phenornena, but he was hopeful.

In spite of ail the physical and theoretical difficuities which are encountered in the
above proposal, it is hard to believe that the derived relationships ... represent nothing
more than a rnalicious coincidence. Shodd it be estabfished sometme that the scheme
is more than an empty formalism, this would signm a new triumph for Einstein's
general theory of re~ativity?~
Thus, Kalum had discovered an appealing mathematical structuret but he could not foresee the
consequences. He realized, at the time, that,

"...threatening a l l universal hypotheses is the

Sphinx of modem physics, the quantum t h e ~ r y . " ~

3. Concluding remarks

Weyl tried to iink electromagnetism and the coordinate invariance of gravity with an

underlying differential geometry in 1918. His idea was original and deep, but is direct

application to gravitational theory turned out to be physically unacceptable. This was pointed
out by Einstein, who noticed that the scale change associated with paralie1 transfer wouid

make atomic clocks dependent upon theu history, and lead to the smearing of spectral lines.
Even though Weyl's theory was flawed, however, its mathematics was inspiring. It showed,

for the fust tirne, how a geometrical significance could be ascribed to the electromagnetic
field, and fuahermore, it was the bridge by which the concept of non-Riemannian connections
was introduced to physics. It inspired Kaluza to set out to anain a unification of gravitation

and electromagnetism by a different aethod, and he, in turn, was led to a five-dimensional
relativity. Although both Weyl and Kaluza only achieved f o d unifications with classical

fields, they both exhibited the possibilies of associating a geometncal structure with
electromagnetism. Together, their work wodd prove to be Mporiant following the
development of quantum mechanics, when a new meaning for gauge theory wodd emerge.

1. Levi-Civit (1917). Note that although Levi-Civit came up

with the idea of p a r a l l e l transfer, it is Weyl's paper of 1918 that
brought it to the attention of the physics community.
2.
Integrability holds only for Euclidean geometry, which is
gravitation4ree .

As Weyl rernarked a few years later, "Inspired by the weighty

inferences of Einstein's
theory to examine the mathematical
f oundations anew, the present miter made the discovery that
Riemann's geometry goes only half w a y towards attaining the ideal
of a pure infinitesimal geometry. It still remains to eradicate
the last element of geometry at-a-distance, a remnant of its
Euclidean past. Riemann assumes that it is possible to compare the
lengths of two line elements at different points of space, too; it
is not permissible to use comparisons at a distance in an
"infinitely nearw geometry. One principle alone is allowable; by
t h i s a division of length is transferable frorn one point to that
infinitely adjacent to it. l1 [Weyl (1922), p. 102 .]
3-

5-

Weyl (lgl8a), p. 467.

6.

Weyl (1918a), p. 470.

7. Weyl does not write these as equations, although this sense of

the transformations is clear. His actual paper reads,
. . . the forms (Die Formen) ,
9,dx,ax,, w x ,
are on the same footing as (gleichberechtigt mit) ,
X-gfkdXi-r
@ i d q + d 1gX
where X is an invariant function of position.
[Weyl (1918a), p. 4701
8.
In his two papers of 1918. Weyl referred to his scale
invariance as M a & t a b - I m r i a n z [Weyl (1918a, 1918b) In the 1923
translation of this paper, Perrett and Jeffery translate this as
"measure-invariancew.
In his 1919 paper, Weyl settled on the term Eichinvarianz. [Weyl
(1919)l In the 1922 English translation of the fourth edition of
Raum-Zei t -Mat e r i e , Henry Brose translated Eichinvarianz with the
term "calibration". [Weyl (1922) 1
The term that has become established within the ~ n g l i s hlanguage
literature, vgaugell, first appeared in two English papers which
appeared in 1929, which were translated by G. P. Robertson. [Weyl
(1929a, 1929b)1 9.

Weyl (1918a), p . 471-

10 Additionally, only in Euclidean space is there neither

electromagnetism nor gravitation.
11. Weyl published a more detailed exposition of the geometrical
aspects of his theory later in 1918.
In this paper, Weyl
explicitly uses the concept of afine connection (affine
zusanrmenhang) In a pure infinitesimal geometry (affnely connected
manifold), for any point P there exists a neighbourhood such that
every vector at P can be transformed by a parallel displacement
into a vector at P r (where P' is in that neighbourhood). The
infinitesimal transport of the line element is expressed using the
Christoffel symbol r . This makes a covariant derivative possible,

A "metrical manifold" is then finally obtained only if the line

element at any point P can be compared with respect to the
lengths . [Weyl (1918b)] See also M e h r a (1974), pp . 50-52.

12.
Pauli (1921) notes that under Weyl's theory, the action
integral under which Einstein derived his field equations is not
gauge invariant. Therefore, Weyl needs to set up his own integral
which
is
also
invariant
with
respect
to
scale
transformations. [Pauli (1921), 200.1

13.

Weyl (lgl8a), p. 475

14.

Weyl (lgl8a), p. 475.

15Einstein (1918).
Einstein's remarks are i n c h d e d in a
postscript to Weyl's paper in the original version.

16 -

Einstein (1918).

19. Weyl (1921b). p . 80120.

Weyl (1921b), p. 801-2-

Vizgin is referring to Weyl's fifth

21. Vizgin (1994), 132.
edition of Raum-Zeit-Materie, which was published in 1923.
22.

Weyl (1422), p. 309.

In 1921, Arthur Eddington published a paper with a further

generalization of Weyl's theory. Weyl had made essential use of
the concept of infinitesimal parallel transport, which is the basis
of affine-connection geometry, but his basic geometrical
23.

quantities, which characterizedgravitation and the electromagnetic

field, were ultimately the metric characteristics g, and the fourvector #i.
Eddington did not deny reality to the observed metric,
but he showed that it can be constructed completely from the
coefficients Fap,
of the a f f i n e connection, Eddington regarded
Weyl's geometry as a pecial case of generalized affine geometry,
In general, Eddington introduced a process of natural gauging, in
which a scale was etablished, or adjusted, in each direction
differently, namely, in accordance with the radius of curvature
corresponding to the given point and given direction.
This was
more sensitive than Weyl's theory, and this adjustment of scales
made it possible to reconcile the affine geometry, previously
understood as an unobservable ether geometry, with the natural
geometry f ound experimentally and given by general r e l a t ivity, that
is , Riemannian geometry [Eddington ( 1921)1 For e x p h n a t i o n , see
Vizgin (1994), pp- 137-49 -

The first sketch of the theory was contained i n a letter w h i c h

Kaluza wrote to Einstein in March or April 1919, [Vizgin (1994), p.
24,

1501
25.

Kaluza (1921).

26 .

Since the increase of dimensions from 3 to 4'led to Einstein's

gravitational theory, Kaluza reasoned that a further increase rom
4 to 5, using the 5 -dimensional version of Einsteinrs theory, might
lead to both gravitation and electromagnetism. As Vizgin points
out, Kaluza may have been prompted to the use of five dimensions in
the problem of geometrical unification of gravitation and
electromagnetism by Nordstromrs earlier similar attempt. In 1914,
G u M ~Nordstrom
~
published a paper [Nordstrom (1914)1 in which he
unified his scalar theory of gravitation with
classical,
electrodynamics in the framework of an elegant five-dimensional
scheme. He considered an antisymmetric tensor of second rank in a
f ive-dimensional space
(the physical meaning of the f i f th
coordinate remained obscure), six components of which were
interpreted as electromagnetic field strengths, with the remaining
four components interpreted as a four-vector of the gravitational
field strength for which a corresponding generalization of
Maxwellrs equations was given- Of course, by 1919-21, when scaiar
theories of gravitation had ceased to be t o p i c a l , Kaluza could
either have forgotten about Nordstromrs paper, which would explain
the absence of a reference, or he might have viewed his
construction as entirely different-[Vizgin (19941, p . 153.1
27-

Kaluza (1921), p - 967.

28. In geometrical language, a weak dependence of the fields upon

the fifth dimension would follow from a relatively large curvature
in that dimension - Thus, this weak dependence could be interpreted
as a curling up of the fifth-dimensional space in one direction.

Of course, the question s t i l l remains, w h y

dimension behave in this rnanner?

should the fifth

29. Kaluza used a different notation for the Christoffel symbols,

but to keep things consistent, w e use the form of Chapter 2.

30 Kaluza (1921), pp. 967-68

Kaluza associated these extra
tenns with an auxiliary field ( N e b e n f e l d ) which was not manifested
in the equations of motion-

32.

Kaluza (1921), p. 1971.

Kaluza (1921) p - 972. Einstein and G r o m m e r pointed out the

lack of physical significance, which they regarded as the main
theoretical shortcoming of a l 1 five-dimensional theories,
"In the general theory of relativity, which deals with a fourdimensional continuum, the form
33.

dd=g,.*$x,

represents something that can be directly rneasured by means of rods

and docks in a locally inertial frame, whereas in the fivedimensional continuum of Kaluza's
theory, d$
is a pure
abstraction, devoid, apparently, of direct metrical significance.
Therefore, rom the physical point of view, the requirernent of
general covariance of al1 equations in the five-dimensional
continuum appears entirely unjustified - In addition, there arises
a dubious asyrnrnetry when one dimension is distinguished rom a l 1
the o t h e r s by the cylinder condition, whereas in the structure of
the equations a l l
five dimensions must be on an equal
footing-[ V i z g i n (19941, p - 1591

IV. Gronp Theory and Symmetry in Quantum Mechanics (1 925-3 1)

1. Group theory and quantum mechanics

Symmetry plays a larger role in quantum mechanics than in classical mechanics. The
actual solution of quantum mechanical equations is, in general, so difficult that direct
calculations only yield crude approximations. Altematively, many features of a system can be
deduced by considering fundamental symmetry operations: group theory can reveai features
which are not contingent upon any special assimptions regarding the forces or dynamical Iaws

involved,'
A g o u p G is defbed as a set of eIements g for which a single law of multiplication

law is defined. The product of any two elements of the group g, and g,, must satisfy four

(i)
(ii)
(iii)
(iv)

Closure. If g, and g2 are in the group, then g'g, is in the group.

Identity. There is an element I such that &=gi=g.
Inverse. For every element g,there is an inverse element g-', such that gg-'=g-'g=L
Associativity. gg,(gg3)=(g,g3g,.

The nurnber of elements in the group need not be finite, or even countable. Note that the
group elements need not cornmute: g,g2#ggl.If a l l the elements do cornmute, the group is
called Abeliun. Translations in space and time form an Abelian group, but rotations do not.
Groups can be either nnite or idhite, discrete or continuous. In physics, there are groups of

transformations which leave a quantity, or a set of quantities, invariant? In particular, groups

which leave the Hamiltonian or Lagrangian invariant are called symmetry groups.
The groups most important to particle physics are Lie groups. These continuous

groups are named after Sophus Lie, who was the first to undertake a systematic study of the

construction of transformation groups from their infinitesimal elementsl Once these

52

elements are known, the rest of the group can be generated by integration.'

Lie hunself

referred to these groups as infinitesimal groups, and he worked with both global and local

groups. The name Lie g r o q was introduced by Elie Cartan in 1930, but he used it to refer
only to locally Euclidean groups, which are now known as global Lie groupso Global Lie

groups have parameters which are space-time independent: these rigd groups include the
rotation groups, the Lorentz group, and groups of UILitary transformations. If the parameters
are ailowed to Vary IocalIy with space-the however, the group becomesmbZe.

Flexible

groups include the group of a l l coordinate traDSformatiom in general relativity, which we have

encountered dready, and local gauge groups, which will become of prime importance to us
later.'

The archetypal Lie group is an nxn matrix group, with continuous elements. The

Lorentz group, for instance, consists of a set of 4x4 matrices. The collection of all
orthogonal nxn matrices is the group O(n).' The group O(3) describes rotational symmetry
in three-dimensional space, and this is the symmetry which Noether's theorem reIates to the
conservation of angdar momenhun. Indeed, the entire quantum theory of anguiar momentum
is really clandestine group theory. Altematively, the collection of a l l unitary nxn matrices is

cailed U(n)? If we restnct ourselves to unitary matrices with determinant 1, we have the
group SU(^)." The group SU(2) has a mathematical structure close enough to that of O(3)
to

look familiar, but different enough to be suitable for the new physics."
Every group G can be represented by a group of matrices. For every group element g,

there is a maeix M, This correspondence respects group multiplication, in the sense that if

nb=c, then M&=Mc

If a representation is isomorphic to the group it represents, then the

representation is said to befiithfuLn This does not have to be the case, as many distinct
group elements can be represented by the same rnatrk-l3 Each group of nxn matrices,

however, is a faithful representation of itseIf, cailed the findamental representation In

generai, there are many other representations of a group, embodied in matrices of various

dimension^.'^ For example, the group SU(2) has representations of dimension 1 (the trivial
one), 2 (the fundamental represeetaton), 3, 4, and every other positive integer. A major
problem in group theory is the enumeration of dl the representations o f a given group. A
new representation can always be constructed by combining two old ones, but such a

representation is said to be reducible. In the enumeration of representations, only the

irreducible representations are counted, that is, only those representations which cannot be
decornposed into block-diagonal form.

This results in only certain dimensions of

representations being possible, since the number of possible dimensions is k e d by the

mathematical structure of the group. For instance, the group SU(3) can only have

representations of 1, 3, 8, 10, and 27-dimensional representations, and higher. Several

examples of representations are famiiiar- A four-vector belongs to the four-dimensional
representation of the Lorentz group, a vector belongs to the three-dimensional representation
of 0(3),and an ordinary scalar belongs to the one-dimensional representation.

2. Symmetry and quantum mechaaics

i. S~ectrailines and electron min

In 1924, before the discovery of quantum mechanics, Woifgang Pauli was sudying the
Zeeman effect, the splitting of spectral lines in a magnetic field, and he found a simple

generalization.15 He noticed that no two electrons could have the same set of quantum
numberd6 A year before, Edrnund Stoner had proposed the d e that the number of
eleceons in each completed shell is equai to double the sum of the huer quantum numbers-l7

For an atom, these numbers are: the principal quatltum number n, the angular momentum
number Z which takes the values I ' , l . . n - 1 , and the magnetic quantum number m which
ranges fiom -&mg- The third number rn becomes important when the atom is subjected to a
magnetic fieId, because each Level (n,l) is split into 21+1 levels. Although the s u m of the

inner quantum numbers, accordhg to this definition, is N+,

Stoner's d e implies that the

number of electrons in each shell n should be 218. Stoner did not offer an explanation why
this number is twice as large as expected, but Pauli did. Pauli described the Zeeman effect as
arking fiom the individual valence electrons d e r i n g fiom , "...a classically undescribabIe

"

."
two-valuedness (~weideuti~keit)

This two-valuedness, or duplexity, was pualing, and although Pauli did not understand
it, he interpreted it as a new quantum number.

His rule, that no two electrons can be in the

same state, as described by a set of quantum numbers, came to be known as Pauli's exclusion

prin~iple.'~Later that same year, the interpretation for the two-valuedness of the electron

was furnished by two young Dutch physicists, Uhlenbeck and Goudsmit, who discovered an
additional degee of freedom for the electron, namely, electron spin. Paul Dirac remembers
that a few people were hinking about spin in those days, but initially, there was a lot of

opposition to the idea2* At the time, Uhlenbeck and Goudsmit were workhg in Leiden with
.

Paul Ehrenfest, who suggested that they take their idea to Lorentz. Lorentz told them that he
had already thought of the idea hirnself, but that it was impossible for the electron to have a

spin, because if it dici, the speed of the surface of the electron would be greater than the

velocity of light Uhlenbeck and Goudsmit went back to Ehrenfest and said that they would

Iike to withdraw the paper that they had given to him, but Ehrenfest said it was too late,
because he had already sent it off for publication, adding that its authors were young enough
to be able to affod a stupiciity!" The idea of spin, however, rapidly proved to be
ndispensable."

..

11-

Quantum statistics and permutation mmmetw

Already in 1924, a mathematicai treatment of a system of N identical particles existed

within statistical mechanics. It was introduced by Satyendra Bose, who provided a new

derivation of Planck's law, based upon the counting of cells in single-particle phase space.

Bose did this by arranghg the total energy so it was distributed among various possible States
for the oscillators which compose the electromagnetic field, and then dowing equal
probabilities for any number of degrees of excitation of each of the oscillators?

Bose was

having trouble getting his work published, so he sent to Einstein, who was enthusiastic about
it, and translated into German for the Zeitschnfrfir Physik. Einstein then extended this

treatment into a quantum theory of an ideal monatomic gad4 This form of statisticai
mechanics is now known as Bose-Einstein statistics, and it applies to alI particles which have

integral spin, such as or-particles and photons, which are now called bosons.
Enrico Fermi was also working on the quantization of systems containing identical
partictes, but he found a different form of statistics? After reading Pauli's article on the
exclusion principle, Fenni realized that this principle would allow his ideai gas theory to

predict entropy values at both low and hgh temperatures without haWig to resort to any
arbitrary assumptions. In March 1926, he published this statistics, which applies to all
particles with half-integer spin, such as electrons and protons, which are now called
fermions.26
Independently, Dirac found the same statistics by a different method?'

In August of

the same year, Dirac published his work based upon the study of eigenfiuictions of a

quantum-mechanical system which are antisymmetric under particle exchange."

Dirac

proved that an antisymmetricd eigenfiuiction vanishes identically when two electrons are in
the same orbit, which is the r e d t he expected fom Pauli's exclusion p r i n ~ i p l e -For
~ an
atom with several electrons,

... if the positions of two of the electrons are interchanged, the new state of the atom is
physically indistinguishable fiom the original one. In such a case, one would expect
only syrnmetrical fiinctions of the coordinates of all the electrons to be capable of
being represented by maPices. It is found that this allows one to obtain two solutions
of the problem s a t i s m g a l l the necessary conditions... One of the solutions leads to
Pauli's priciple that not more than one electron can be in any given orbit, and the
other, when applied to the analogous problem of the ideal gas, leads to the EinsteinBose statistical mechani~s?~
Thus, Dirac was the &st to show that the two types of statistics, now usually designated as

Fermi-Dirac and Bose-Einstein, are related to the two possibilities of eigenfunctions of a

system being either antisymmetric or symmetric with respect to the exchange of the

coordinates of two identical particles."

In 1925, Werner Heisenberg had been led to the theory of quantum mechanics by his
study of the Iinear o s c i l l a t ~ r .The
~ ~ following year, he considered two identical oscillators

symmetricalIy ccupled to each other, and he found that the quantum States of this system
separate into two sets, one symmetric under exchange of the osciilator coordinates, the other

anti-symmetrc under e x c h a ~ ~ e .Assuming

'~
that the oscillators carry electncal chargey
Heisenberg reasoned that radiative transitions occur o d y between states withi each set, and
never between one set and the other. Six weeh later, he published an accoimt of the helium

spectrum, but he compiained to Pauli that his calculations were imprecise and incomplete?

In November 1926, a young Hungarian chernical engineer living in Berlin, Eugene

Wigner, went M e r . He worked with permutations of the positions of three particles, which
left the spins unchanged?

Wigner's methods were not yet refined, however, and since he

was unable to extend the results to higher n, he condted his &end, the mathematician John

von Neumann. von Neumann referred Wigner to Frobenius, and only two weeks later,
Wigner had solved the generd case! He published a second paper, which begins the paper
with an achowledgment to von Neumann, dong with the assertion,

... there exists a well-developed mathematical theory which one can use here: the
theory of transformation groups which are isomorphic with the symmetnc group (the
group of permutations).36
Thus, goup theory had entered quantum mechanics."

By the end of the following year,

1927, Wigner had already found the principal resuIts of the application of group theory to
atomic spectra that wouid form the foundations of his book."
For Wigner, almost ail the d e s of spectroscopy can be denved nom the application of
group the or^.)^

Apart nom the group of permutqtions, he immediately recognized the

importance of the rotation group for quantum mechanics. Since the states of a quantum

mechanical system form a linear manifold, any superposition of two or more states with the
same definite energy still has that same energy?

If the state is subjected to a rotation, the

energy remains invariant, as expected fiom classical theory, but in quantum theory, we may

consider superpositions of the

state and aU Ends

of rotated states, al2 of which have the

same definite energy. Thk means that w e can build up s p h e n d y symmetnc states-the

spherical harmonies, which lead to the quantum mechanical theory of angular momentum Jy
which in tum, may be applied to the possible electronic configurations grouped around the
stationary nucleus of an atom?

Even when the rotational symmetry of the quantum mechanical system is broken by a
weak electric or magnetic field, the system still has a degree of symmetry lefi. A magnetic
field, for instance, can be treated as a perturbation, which stll has a simple behaviour under
the symmetry operation which it destroys, namely, it splits an energy level w i i angular

momentum J into U
t
1 equdly spaced energy levels, with the spacing proportional to the

of the o?tical transitions orginating fiom the members o f each split level.
Although Weyl had been Ied to his interest in Lie groups through relativity? he also
applied his expertise to the emergent quantum mechanics, and he pubkhed his fkst paper on
his new methods by 19279' In the academic year 1927-28, Weyl delivered a series of

quantum mechanicd applications of group theory to students in Zrich, and by the end of the

year, even before Wigner, Weyl had published his own book on the ~ubject:~ Weyl's book
was profound, but the response from the physics community was mixed, and it was not used
very much. Born, Heisenberg, and Sommerfe1d al1 wrote letters to Weyl cornplainhg about
the dificulty of the book.44 Schfidinger offers a typical response in his letter,

... we know in what dire need we are of much of what you have to Say to us. PIease,
take the trouble to tell us these things in an easily comprehensible fashion and not with
too many concept formations that are new to us--ifpossible in shabby old wom
concepts, which you already fid boring, I know, It is fim to build new concept

structures, it is your innermost sphere of interest, but the physicai is still hidden in the
dark to such an extent, that we cannot hope to be able to work successfully in nich
darlmess with such compiicated, rinfamrliar instruments?
In 1935, Condon and Shortiey offered their opinion of group theory in the introduction to
their book, Theory of Atornic Spectre,

The reader WUhave heard that this mathematical disciplule s of great importance.
We manage to get dong without it When Dirac visited Princeton in 1928, he gave a
seminar report on his paper showing the connection of exchange energy with the spin
variables of the electron. In the discussion following the report, Weyl protested that
Dirac had said that he would derive the results without the use of group theory but, as
WeyI said, aiI of Dirac's arguments were reaily applications of group theory. Dirac
replied, "1 said 1 wodd obtaui the results without previous knowledge of group
theory.16
As an example of the different attitudes towards group theory, for Weyl and Wigner, the three

Pauli spin matrices of 1

927:'

are identified as the generators of the symmetry SU(2);'

Condon and Shoaley, on the other

hand, relate these matrices to the well-known calculationai methods of angular momentun,
without invoking group theory."

Condon and Shortley think that when a physicist wants to Iearn of new theoretical
developments, one of the greatest barriers can be mathematicai methods with which he is
unfamiliar. For example, general relativity brought with it the necessity of leaming tensor
calculus and Riemadan geometry. Because these new methods can often be difficult,

Condon and Shortley choose to minimize the amount of new mathematics necessary to tackle
the problems of line spectra. They do not use group theory explicitly, although they do refer
the interesteci reader to the texts

of both Weyl and Wigner.''

iii- Paritv. tirne-reversal, and charge coniunation invariance

Early in 1924, Otto Laporte, a student of Sommerfeld, was studying the spectruxn of
iron, and he found that here were two subsets of energy levels that do not intercombine?
He found that transitions were always within one of the two subsets, and never fiom one to
the other. Following Laporte, in May 1927, Wigner divided atomic States into normal ternis

and reflected (gespiegelltee) te-,

and he noted that for electric dipole radiation, oniy

transitions between normal and reflected states are allowed. Later that same year, he
published his seminal paper, "On the conservation laws of quantum mechanics", in which he
noted that these laws are associated with the existence of a uni-

reflection operator P

(Spiegelung) that cornmutes with the Hamiltonian H? AS result, states can be chosen nich
that P and H are simdtaneously diagonal. This means that P is consewed. The eigenvalues

of he reflection operator are either +l or

-1, and are said to refer to even and odd

Wigner stressed that although invariance under spatial reflection is well-defined in classical

mechanics, panty conservation is present o d y in quantum rnechanic~.~

Invariance under time reversal (0,the next discrete symmetry to enter quantum
rnechanics, was initiated by Hendrik Kramers in 1930, although once again, it was Wigner

who claified it."

Kramers noticed that in an electric field, for an odd number of electrom,

the energy eigenstates are at least doubly degenerate. To prove diis, he used an operator,
which two years later, Wigner identified with the tirne-reversal operator in quantum
mechanics- A general feature of 2'-invariance is that it aiways involves relations between

diffeerenr states, unlike the situation for P, which is an hainsic property of a single state."

This means that there is no quantum number reiated to pinvariancece To apply tune-revers&
we must not

ody reverse momenta, but spins as weu.

Charge conjugation invariance took longer to be clarified. In 1928, Dirac presented

his relativistic wave-fnction, and although he was able to incorporate spin nanirally, to

explain the magnetic moment of the electron, and to explain the fine-structure of the

hydrogen spectrum, his theory had a problem. It predicted states of negative energy, and it
was unclear how ta interpret them,

One gets over the difnculty on the classicd theory by arbitrariiy excluding those
solutions that have a negatve E. One cannot do this on the quantum theory, since in
general, a perturbation wiil cause transitions fkom states with E positive to states with
E negative..."n
Two years Iater, Dirac offered an answer in his paper, "A theory of electrons and protons"?

Dirac invoked the exclusion principle, so that two electrons could not iden-

the same state,

and he postuiated that, "...ail the states of negative energy are occupied except perhaps a few
of small velo~ity."~~
These empty states he c d e d holes, and these holes exhibited the
properties of positively charged, positive energy particles. Dirac reasoned that the uniformly
filied distribution of negative-energy states would be unobservable to us, but an unoccupied
state, being exceptional, would make its presence felt as a hole. Dirac thought that this

concept could explain pair creation and annihiIation. Given enough energy, a negative-energy

partide could be lifted up into a positive-energy state, while leavig a hole behind, and the

reverse process could aiso occur.

Dirac identified the holes with protons, but he soon reahed that this was a rnistake.
The following year, he realized that if the particle in question were a proton, the chance of it

colliding witb an electron redting in anddation would be too great to account for the
stability of matter. In addition, Weyl had shown that this particle should have the same m a s
as an electrod" Accordingly, Dirac offered another interpretation,

... in the world as we know it, ail, and not merely nearly d,of the negative-energy
state for electrons are occupied. A hole, if there were one, would be a new kind of
particle, unknown to experimentd physics, having the same mass and opposite charge
to an electron. We may c d such a particle an anti-ele~tron.~'
1n 1933, the anti-electron was found by Car1 Anderson, a d he named it the ~ositron." h i s

was the fust charge conjugate particle.

This original theory of antirnatter aiiowed for a h d of creation and annihilation of

particles even without htroducing the ideas of quantum field theory. In fact, Dirac had
always resisted the idea that quantum field theory was needed to describe any sort of partide
but photons?

In 1934, however, a pair of papers by Furry and Oppenheimer, and by Pauli

and Weisskopf showed how quantum field theory naturaily incorporates the idea of admatter,
without introducng unobserved particles of negative energy, as welI as describing

satisfactorily the creation and annihilation of particles and photon^.^ In this context,
particles and antiparticles can both exist on the same level as quanta of the various quantum
fields.

In 1937, Wendell Furry noted curious Iooking canceilations in higher-order

s . found
~ ~ thai these cancellations codd be
calculations of quantum e l e ~ t r o d ~ c He
expressed in tems of a rule, now known as Furry's theorem: any rnatrix element with an odd
nurnber of extemal photons and no extemd electrons or positrons is zero?

This rule was

soon viewed as a speciai case of invariance under charge conjugation, a temi introduced later
that same year by Kramers, in his paper, "The use of charge-conjugated wave-functions in the

63

hole-theory of the eleciron-" Kramers' work demonstrated that Ginvariance can be properly
treated only in the context of quantum field theory, and that the electromagnetic curent and
vector potential change sign under c!'

iv. The Lorentz group and relativstic invariance

The lima. character of the states in quantum mechanics has interesthg consequences.
If we subject a state to not o d y rotations, but aiso ta ail possibIe Lorentz trdormations, we
can form a set of states with remarkable properties. In 1939, Wigner found that the
fundamental group for particle physics is not the homogenous Lorentz group of boosts and
rotations, but the inhomogeneous Lorentz group, now called the Poincar group, consisting of
these transformations p h trans1ati0n.s.~~
These infinite sets remain closed under any
Poincar transformation, that is, if we subject any member of any set to a boost, rotation, or

translation, it becomes a linex superposition of the original members of the same set- This
set is characterized by only two numbers: energy of the states at rest, which is the same for
ali members, and the angular momentun of the states at rest- Since the allowed

transformations include time displacement, the t h e deveiopment of each member is also

determined.6'

3. Concluding remarks

In 1927, Weyl and Wigner pioneered the application of group theory to the recently
discovered quantum mechanics. Although they were very successfid, and their work was
adrnired, others felt it was unnecessary to master this forma1 mathematics before proceeding

to the physics, and they opted for direct calculation instead At this eariy stage of

development, the power o f group theory had yet to be discovered.

2,

See Wigner (1931), pp- 58-59.

B y t h e same token, i f one replaces a continuous group by its

infinitesimal elements, one has a Lie algebra. [Wey1(1939), p - 6821

5,

The O stands f o r orthogonal: an orthogonal matrix is one whose

8
inverse is equal to its transpose 0-'=O=.
9 - A unitary rnatrix is one whose inverse is equal to i t s transpose
conjugate, LT'= (CF)'.

10 -

The S stands for llspecial",

which j u s t means deteminant 1.

11. There is a 2 to 1 mapping of the elements of SU ( 2 ) onto 0 ( 3 .

In this sense, spinor representations of S U ( 2 ) are not t x u e
representations of the rotation group, which explains why they do
not appear in classical physics.[Ryder (19851, p. 381

13. Mathematically, the representation c m be homomorphie, but not

isomorphic, to the group G.

A trivial case of this i the
representation of every element by the 1 x 1 unit rnatrix. [Griffiths
(1987), p . 1071

14. The number o r rows and columns in a representation matrix is

referred to as the dimension of the representation.
15.

Pauli (1925).

16.

Condon and Shortley (19351, p . 166,

17. Heilbron (1983) , p . 282

Stoner uses the quantum numbers n,
k, w i t h a t h i r d quantum number j, that, at the time, w a s still very
much a p o i n t of contention.

18. Quoted in Heilbron (19831, p. 302. Precisely, Pauli here is

referring to the so-called anomalous Zeeman effect, which was
recognized l a t e r as being related to the spin of the electron*

1 9 - Pauli's first enuneiation of the rule was in a l e t t e r to Land

in December 1924, T t s h a l l be forbidden for more than one electron
[in the same atomf
- to have the same values of [al1 applicable]
quantum numbers .
Quoted in Heilbron (1983), p . 261. The name.
exclusion principle, was furnished by Dirac (1926) p. 670tl,,

20. Dirac (1983), p - 40, Dirac adds that one of the first people
to suggest spin wa Ralph de Laer Kronig, who was working with
Pauli at the time. Pauli was skeptical, however, and so Kronig
abandoned the idea,

21.

Dirac (1983), p - 40.

See also Pais (19861, pp-

274-80-

22.
To avoid the difficulty raised by Lorentz of speed of
rotation, the concept of electron spin can be thought of instead as
an intrinsic angular momentum23.

Dirac (1983), p. 45.

24- Pais (1982), p. 423.

25.

Fermi (19621, p . 178-

26. Fermi (1926). Fermi did not enclose his ideal gas i n a box,
according to the current treatment, but placed the particles
instead in a ttiree-dimensional harmonic oscillator potential. In
this w a y , he obtained a spherically symmetric, rnonotonically
decreasing gas density. [Fermi (1962), p . 178 - 1
27. According to Dirac, "Enrico Fermi had written about t h i s other
kind of statistics, but 1 had forgotten about Fermi's paper when 1
wrote my own work on the subject, and 1 made no reference to Fermi
in i t . Fermi wrote t o me, pointing out that he had been the first
to propose this kind of statistics, and 1 had to agree with h i m and
to apologize to him for forgetting about his paper. [Dirac (1983),
pp. 45-46]
Ir

28. A state is antisymmetric if it changes sign under interchange

of the particles 1-2 29.

Dirac (19261, p - 669.

30.

Dirac (1926), p. 662-

31. Although Heisenberg had independently pointed out these two

possibilities, unlike Dirac, he did not develop the theory of an
ideal gas of particles described by these eigenfunctions. [Fermi
(1962), p - 1791
32.

Heisenberg (19251,

33.

Heisenberg (1926a).

P a i s (1986), p . 26s
The paper in question is Heisenberg
(1926b). Although others refined Heisenberg' s work, this paper

34.

contains the first quantum mechanical application of the Pauli

principle :
two-electron wave functions are antisymmetric for
simultaneous exchange of space and spin coordinates.
35.

Wigner (1926a)-

36-

Wigner (1926b), p. 883-

Pais once asked W i p e r whether the transition fxom three to

four i d e n t i c a l particles marked his first full awareness of t h e
power of group theory- He replied that, of course, that had been
important, but already in his chemical engineering days, Wigner had
needed the classical space groups for a paper on the l a t t i c e
structure of rhombic sulphur, [Pais (1986), p. 2661
There was already a long tradition of the application of symmetry
principles to crystallography. Wigner (1976) notes that in 1830,
J. F. C. Kessel determined 32 crystal c l a s s e s which were the f i n i t e
subgroups of the three-dimensional rotation-reflection group t h a t .
contain o n l y elements of t h e order 1, 2 , 3 , 4 , or 6. L a t e r , in
1891, A. Schonflies and E - S. Fedorov independently determined the
230 space groups, that is, the 230 discrete subgroups of the
Euclidean group that contain three non-coplanar displacements[Wigner (1976), p. 8791
Fox the interested reader, it was t h e
study of the symmetry of crystals which inspired Pierre Curie to
m i t e his famous paper in 1894 in which he analyzed the symmetry
properties of a magnetic field by exarnining how it is created by an
e l e c t r i c c u r r e n t , [Curie ( 1 8 9 4 ) 1
37.

Wigner (1931).
39-

Wigner (19301, pp. v-vi.

Wigner (1976), pp. 3 4 2 - 3 4 3 .

to momentum-

40.

The argument applies j u s t as well

41.
With the exception of the principal number n, a l 1 other
quantum numbers can be i n t e r p r e t e d as indices characterizing
representations of groups.

The first e d i t i o n of this text appeared in 1 9 2 8 , the second in

1931- [Weyl (l93la)1

43.

44. Sigurdsson (1991), p. 235.

Yang wrote about Weyl's book in
his centenary lecture, wArnost every theoretical physicist barn
before 1935 has a copy of [the book] on his bookshelves. But very
few read it: most are not accustomed to Weyl's concentration on
the structural aspects of physics and feel uncornfortable with his

emphasis on concepts.
The book was j u s t too abstract for most
physicists. Ir [Yang (1980), p . 10 - 1

45 -

Quoted i n Sigurdsson (1991) , p - 236.

Condon and Shortley (1935). pp- 10-11.

47-

Pauli (1927), p. 6 0 8 .

Wigner (19311, p. 158. W e y l also notes t h e relation between

SU(2) and t h e Lorentz group. [Weyl (193laL p .
481
A good
d i s c u s s i o n of this r e l a t i o n appears i n Ryder (1985) , pp . 3 8 - 4 5 ,

48.

49.

Condon and Shortley (19351, p - 55-

50.

Condon and Shortley (1935), p - 11- They also r e f e r to a 1932

L. van d e r Waerden in this context.

t e x t by B .

51.

Laporte (1924) .

52 -

Wigner

(1927b) -

5 3
Note t h a t Weyl (1931) and Pauli (1933) s t i l l use the name
l%iignaturell. 1 am not sure who was t h e first to use t h e term
l 1 p a r i t y U ,but i t appears i n Condon and Shortley (1935)

54.
Note t h a t the term parity, as used here, r e f e r s t o orbital
parity. T h e i n t r i n s i c p a r i t y of t h e proton and e l e c t r o n do not
corne i n t o q u e s t i o n , because for a l 1 of physics, one may introduce
t h e convention t h a t these two parities are p l u s I f any other
convention is chosen, l a q u a g e needs to be changed s l i g h t l y , but
observable conclusions are not af f e c t e d . Wick, Wightman and Wigner
(1952) stressed that t h e q u e s t i o n of whether t h e r e l a t i v e parities
of t w o states are measurable o r j u s t conventional is r e l a t e d to t h e

possibility

of

observing,

in

any

experiment

whatsoever,

the

relative phase of t h e s e states.

55.

K r a m e r s (1930), Wigner (1932).

56.

Pais ( 1 9 8 6 ) , p . 5 2 7 -

D i r a c (1928a), p . 612.
W i n s t e a d of E .

57.

58.

Dirac (1930)-

59.

Dirac (1930), p , 362.

60,

Weyl (1931a), p. 263.

61.

Dirac (19311, p. 61-

N o t e that D i r a c

denotes the energy by

62,

Anderson (1933), p . 491.

63-

Weinberg (1977), p , 2 4 .

64.

Furry and ~ppenheimer (19341, Pauli and Weisskopf (1934).

66.
"In calculations using plane wave functions as a basis (Born
approximation) f o r processes-in which the appearance of electrons
and positrons is t r a n s i t o r y only, the odd order contributions
vanish identically."[Furry (19371, p. 1251
(l986), p , 527.

67.

Pais

68,

W i g n e r (1939) .

69. In 1939, Wigner demonstrated that every state of any system

can be considered as a linear combination of States, each of which
belongs to an irreducible representation of the Poincar
group. [Wigner (1939)1

V. The Reinterpretation of Gauge Theory (1927-34)

1. Relativistic generalizations of quantum mechanics
i, Klein and five-diinensional relativitv (192Q

In 1926, Oskar Klein offered a connection between Kaluza's unified theory and the
quantum theory in his paper, "Quantum theory and five-dimensional relativity".'

Klein noted

that the ten gravitational potentials g , and the four electromagnetic potentids 6,can be linked
through a five-dimensional metric,

With this formalism, Klein could dispense with Kaluzaystwo approxhations, and stiii write

the equations of motion as geodesic equations. By regarding these equations as a kind of

wave-propagation, he could derive a five-dimensional generalization of the w k w x p t i o ~ ,
and by restncting the solution so that the fifth dimension appeared only in a certain manner,
he could reach agreement wth quantum mechanics.

To relate the coefficients y, to the usud g, and 4pof standard relativity, Klein had to
make a few assumptions. The coordinates x ' , 2 3 , x 4 had to correspond to four-space, and gik
couid not depend upon the fi% coordinate x? He demanded that equation (1) be invariant
not only under the familiar group of point transformations?
$=J(x

for +1,2,3,4,

'3

but also,

x0-

iO+-(x'~

(3 1

under which ,
y remains invariant. H e is therefore justified in taking ymto be a constant, and

endowing only the ratios of the y, with a physicd meaning,' Klein was thus able to split up

the line element,

(4)

such that the following differentials were invariant under the transformations of equatiom (2)

This implied that 7, behaves like a four-vector. In fact, snce the qmtities,

transfomi like the electromagnetic field F, Klein associated the 7, with the electromagnetic

four-potental,

This allowed Klein to derive the equations of motion for charged particles, giving both the
equations of gravitation and those of electrodynamics fiom the variational p ~ c i p l e ,

where

P is the ciwature of the manifold.) Because terms involving 2 do not appear, these

equations are compatible with geodesic equahons!'

KLein then set out to establish the connection between the five-dimensionai relativity
theory and quantum mechanics.* He started fiom the Lagrangian,

and then he defned momenta in the standard way,

\

P
i
'

aL

a (axi/w

for i=0,1,2.3,4. The motions in the fifth dimension are obviously not apparent in ordinary

experiments, but Klein thought that the observed motion could be thought of as a kind of
projection onto space-the of a wave-propagation which takes place in five dimensions!

By

averaging over the unobserved motion in the fiAh dimension, Klein could associate p,
with Planck's comant,

where X is the length associated with the period which Klein was able to calculate,

Klein took the mail magnitude of th-s value as vindication of the non-appeatance of the fifth
dimension in ordinary experiments. Although his resuits were incomplete, Klein was pleased
so far,

... the differential equation underlying the new quantum mechanics of Schrdinger can
be derived fiom a wave equation of a five-dimensional space, in which h does not
appear originally, but is introduced in connection with a periodicity in 2. Aithough
incomplete, this result ... suggests that the origin of Planck's quantum may be sought
just in this periodicity in the nfth dimension-'
Although Klein appeared to have attained a type of unification between electromagnetism and

gravitation, the theory remained marginal because it was formal in nature, and made no new
physical predictions. Yet although Klein established a definite link between five-dimensional
relativity and quantum mechanics, he ended the papa quite tentatively,
There is also left open the question as to whether the fourteen potentials are su&cient
to describe the physical phenornena or whether the Schrodinger method requires the
introduction of a new state-va.iable.8
ii. Fock and invariance 1192Q
At the same time, the Russian Vladunir Fock was carrying out similia work In

Fock presented his work, "on the invariant form of the wave and motion equations ..."9

1926,

While Fock's work was SHIin press, Klein's paper arriveci in Leningrad. Although the two

men achieved simiiar results, they did it through different rneth~ds.'~Like Klein, Fock ais0
found a relativistic generalization of the wave equation in five-dimensional space, and he also
showed that the trajectory of a charged pamcle can be regarded as a geodesic in a fivedimensional Riemannian space" by interpreting the scalar wave equation in a five-dimensional
Riemannian space as a relativitic g e n e r b t i o n of the SchrSdinger ~ave-e~uation.'~
He
went beyond mein, however, by d i s c o v e ~ ga new transformation invoIvhg the enigmatic

f331coordinate,
Fock noticed a set of transformations under which his relativistic wave-equation
remained invariant, l3

where f is an arbitrary fiuiction of the space-time coordinates, and p is the fiffh coordhite of

the manifold. Further, Fock found that he could rewrite the equations of motion in a form
which obeyed these transformations (dong with Lorentz traudormations) without relying on
the f a coordinate! t 4

Since this coordinate does not appear in his wave equations, Fock assumes that the
dependence of the wave fiinction J. o n p is given by an exponential factor. To eennire
agreement with experiment, Fock concluded that the wave-fiinction rnust take the form,
iC.-fi,e

Sri4

What is the significance of the nfth coordinate p? According to Fock,

(14)

The significance of the superfiuous parameter p seems to Iie in the fact that it
implements the invariance of the equations with respect to the addition of an arbitrary
gradient to the four-potential."

Fock has therefore shown that two fiuictions J. and S.' obtained with the vector potentials
A and A-Vf

differ o d y by a factor,

which has an absolute value of 1. This implies directly that his transforr~tionsremain valid
if the wave-fiinction is multiplied by the exponentid factor,

Although Klein had also introduced the condition of periodic dependence of the ifth
coorduiate of the wave-hction, only Fock's paper contaios these transformations.

Fock included a footnote to his work in which he linked the dependence upon the fifth
coordinate to an earlier idea, put forward by Erwin Schrodinger,

The appearance of the parameter p in exponentid form could perhaps be connected to

some relationships that were pointed out by Schrodinger in 1922.16
In the 1922 paper, Schr6dinger had discussed a remarkabIe property within Weyl's theory,
which would corne to prominence after a reinterpetahon by Fritz London. In the wake of

ths new viewpoint, Fock's transformations were soon to become indispensable to elementary

particle physics."

2. Rebirth of Weyl's gauge theory

i. Schr6dinger and auatltum orbits (1 922)

In I9Z, SchrBdinger became a professor at the Universiiy of Ziinch, where Weyl had
worked since 1913, and the two of them bec-

fiends. Akhough Schr6dinger was f d a r

with generai relativityand was making a few contri'butioons here and there, he was mainly

working on quantum theory at the the? In 1922, SchrOdinger wrote a paper in which he
tried to formulate Bohr's weli-known quantum conditions in the language of Weyl's unined

field theory. He called if "On a remarkable property of the quantum orbits of a single

In the paper, he started off with an explicit calculation of the change of length induced
in a vector by pzaliel transfer. Because of the linear differential form @&,,

the scale of

length undergoes a change under the transport,20

dZ=-l+,&

Subsequently, the length of a vector is aected. It is multiplied by the factor,

Schrdinger then related Weyl's vector & to the electromagnetic potentials,

e
where 7 is a constant?

-f

t Vdc-A,&-A,&-A,dd

(19)

The remarkable (bemerkennverte) property to which Schr~dinger

referred in the title is that,

... the "genuine"(echten) quantum-conditions, that is, those that are sufficient to
determine the energy and thus the spectnun, are just sufncient to make the exponent of
the path-factor (19) an integer multiple of h/y (which is a pure number according to
the above) for dl approximate periods of the system."
Schrodinger then demonstrates how it holds for the cases of the unperturbai Kepler orbits, the

76

Zeeman effect, the Stark effect, and combined paralle1 electric and magnetic fields."
Schr3dinger goes on to discuss the implications of this propertyy

... ifthe electron were to carry with it in its orbit some "length (S~ecke)that is
transported unchanged in the motion, then CaIcuIated fiom some arbitrary point of the
orbit, the measure (MaflzahI) of this interval wodd always arrive multiplied by an
almost exactly integral power of
whenever the electron retumed with good accuracy to the original position and,
simultaneously, to the initial state of motion...24
Although he is not sure what it means, Schrodinger befieves ?hatthis is an important remit,

It is hard to beieve that this result is merely a fomUtous mathematical consequence of

the quantum conditions and does not have a deep physical significance."
Schrodinger recognizes that it is questionable whether the electron carries a length dong with
it in its motion, and he believed that it is possible that Weyl's concept of adjustment was

correct d e r all: instead of undergohg a parallel displacement in its motion, maybe an

electron simply adjusts (einstellt) to the conditions at each point, just as a magnetic needle
adjusts to a magnetic field. The sipnincance of the remarkabte property rnight be then that
not every tempo of alignment is possible for an e l e ~ t r o n . ~ ~
Schrodinger then makes a few guesses at the possible values for the constant y. Since
y has die UILits of action, he reasons that there are two naural choices, both constants with the

dimension of action: they are e2/c and h."

very large, on the order of elm.

If y =e2/c, however, the factor ee would be

O* the other hand,

... the other possibility y = h suggests that the pure imagimy value,

might be a possibility, ia which case the universal factor [(20)] would be equal to
unity, and the scde of any transported interval would be reproduced d e r every quasiperiod.'8
'

Note that the constant yywhich was arbitrary but reai in Weyl's theory, is now i m w .
When y is chosen to have the value W2ni7 the scale factor becomes unity, and so the length
s a l e ceases to be non-integrable. SchrCidinger is not sure how to interpret this property. He
concludes, "...1 do not dare to judge whether this would make sense in the context of Weyl
ge~rnetry."~~
Thus, although Sctilodinger had recognized the importance of this property, he

failed to grasp its implications.

ii. London and the wave-fimction (19271

The first to draw attention to Schr6dingerYs1922 paper, "On a rernarkable property..."

was Fritz London. In it, London saw a prototype and analogue of the wave conception of

particles. On December 10, 1926, he wrote an excited letter to Schfidinger.

you showed that on the discrete actual orbits the gauge unit (Eichenheit) with
y=27dh reproduces tseif in the case of a spatiaily closed path; moreover, you noted at
the same time that on the nth orbit the unit of length swells and contracts n tirnes
exactly as in the case of the standing wave that describes the position of the charge-..You even held in your hands the resonance nature of the quantum postulate long
-*a

before de ~roglie."~'
A week after he had written the letter, London gave a paper at the Wurttemberg branch of the

Gennan Physical Society at Stuttgart, in which he attempted to identw the Weyl measure
with the wave function. In January of 1927, he sent off a bnef note to
Naturw~senschaften," and a month later, he sent off a longer paper to Zeitschriftfr Physik,

which was published as T h e quantum mechanical interpretation of Weyl's t h e ~ r y " . ~ ~

In the longer paper, London begins by explainhg Weyl's 1918 theory as an extension

of Riemannian geometry. He agrees with Weyl that the assumption of a rigid length-scale is
in contradiction with stnctly Local geometry, and that only d o s of the g, at a point, and not

their absolute values, may be determined. AccordingIy, a gauge-measuring rod of length 2

shows the variation,

under an infitesimai translation dr',and the proportionality factors &t are hctions of

position, and thereby characteristics of the scale-proportions of the space. Upon integration

of (2 1), Weyl's mathematics yields,)'

2 +,eP~e

(22)

London notes that in general, the gauge-measure depends upon the path, that is, it is nonintegrable. It is integrable (independent of the path), however, in the special case that the
quantities,

vanish. R e c d that this had led Weyl in 1918 to suggest that 6,should be interpreted as the
electromagnetic field. London wrote that since the electromagnetic field is interpreted through
the scde-relationships of space-tirne, characterized by the variabiiity of the gauge-measure, we
need to write out a proportion factor explicitly,

1-1,e"P'~
where (Y is the proportionality factor, and @ is the electromagnetic four-potential.M

London was extremely impressed by Weyl's effort of 1918,

One can only admire the colossal boldness which led Weyl, on the basis of a purely
forma1 correspondence, to his gauge-geometncaf interpretation cf electromagnetism.
In gravitation, it was a physical fact, the equivalence of gravitational and inertial mas,
that led Einstein to his geometry. In electromagnetic theory, no such fact is
~LIOW~,.?~

Because there is no equivdence principle for elecromagnetisn, London thinks that Weyl need
not have womed about the universal influence of the electromagnetic field on rods or clocks.

On the contrary, Weyl shouid have not even considered it at dl, especiaiiy since Einstein's

arguments concerning the sharpness of spectral Iines was correct London continues, refening
to Weyl's 1921 arguments about persistence and adjutment,

In the face of ... experimental evidence, it mut have been an ununially strong
metaphysical conviction that prevented Weyl fiom abandoning the idea that Nature
wodd have to make use of the beautiful geometrical possibility that was offered He
stuck to his conviction, and evaded discussion of the above mentioned conhadictions
through a rather unclear interpretation of the concept of "real scaie", which, however,
robbed his theory of its immediate phycal meaning and attractiod6
London is interested, nstead, in the mtapped possibilities of Weyl's theory. London wants to
show in his papa that,

... the original forrn of Weyl's

theory contains a much wider range of possbilities than

was used by its creator, that it contains nothing less than a logicai path to wavemechanics, and fiom this point of view has an immediate physical meaning."
Thus, London set out to demonstrate a powerful new interpretation of Weyl's theory.
London began by considering the de Broglie theory, which he d e h e d a s the prequantum-mechanical theory described by the wave-fuaction for the motion of an electron,

where i=1,2,3,4. This equation cornes fiom a complete solution W of the Hamilton-Jacobi
partial differentid equatiox~,'~

where the integration constants are to be determined so that $ is a single-valued fnction of

the space."

Then London moves on to a consideration of the Weyl scale factor. Although

Weyl's theory demonm'ated that the vector +i was proportional to the electromagnetic fourpotential, Weyl had not specified the proportiodity factor a.* Inspired by SchrOdinger's

1922 paper, London chose the value,

Substituthg this value into equation (24) gives,

This bold choice makes it possible for London to identify the length scalar Z, as it varies
according to the Weyl theory, with the de Broglie field-scalar

+ (the wave-fulction).

By

substituthg the scaie factor (28) into the wave equation and by taking a ratio, London

This allows him to directIy reinterpret the Weyl measure,

Thus we have found the physical object that behaves like the Weyl measme: the
complex amplitude of the de Broglie wave; it therefore experiences in the
electromagnetic field exactly the influence that Weyl had postulated for his gaugemeasure and for which--as an empty concept of the physics of the time-he had to
attribute a metaphysical existence. It is therefore the prototype of the Weyl scale."
London says that although Schrodinger mentioned the possibility of this choice, he did not
give it suffcient priority over other choices, because he did not fblly recognize its

significance. Notably, Schrodinger did not emphasize the conceptual leap here involving the

use of complex numbers. London, on the other hand, emphasizes the difference, although he
is not sure exactly what it is,
A more senous difnculty is presented by the complex fonn of the path-factor.
It is here not admissible to restrict oneself to its real part This is a reflection
of the fact that the wave finiction is IntrinsicaiIy complex... The meaning of
the fact that every length has to be regarded as complex, and that the whole
variation of lengths shows up as a change of phase without any change of
absolute value, is a question that 1 should not yet like to discuss?

The difference between Weyl's theory and London's is that Weyl thought that the
four-potential, which M y descnbes the electromagnetic field, was enough to determine the

path-factor. London, on the other hand, showed that these four components had to be
supplemented by a i%h, the wave-hctlon #, which was the physical object that behaved Iike
the Weyl rneasure? London was not sure how to interpret the complex form of this factor,

or the fact that it showed up as a change of phase only. This final step he left to Weyl.

iii. Wevl and the ~ r i n c i ~of

l e eauge invariance (1929)

Weyl's paper of 1929, "EIektron and Gravitation", extended Weyl's originai ideas past
London's reinterpretation. Whereas London's formulation had been tentative, Weyl's
formulation was complete, and in this paper, Weyl went beyond al1 previous ideas in
proposing that electromagnetism be demted fiom the gauge p ~ c i p l e .Since 1918, Weyl had
been cmvinced that there was a close andogy between gravitation and electromagnetism, and

he was particularly impressed by the resemblance between the denvation of charge

conservation and energy-momentum conservation in the two respective theones, but in the
1929 paper, he was inally able to formulate the analogies between the two theories explicitly
by means of the tetrad (Vierbein) fornalism.

Weyl had reinterpreted gauge invariance following London's 1927 reinterpretation of

the non-integrable scale factor as a phase factor of the wave function,

... this "pprinciple of gauge invariancew, is quite analogous to that previously set up by
the author, on speculative gromds;in order to arrive at a unined theory of gravitation
and electricity. But 1now believe that this gauge invariance does not tie together
electricity and gravitation, but raher electricity and mat~ter..!~
Weyl makes it clear early in his 1929 paper that the principle is to be associated with the

wave-equation $,

... the Dirac field-equations for J. together with the MaxweU equations for the four
potentids remain invariant when one makes the simultaneous substitutions,

s/ - + e f i ( ~ )
and

where h is understood to be an arbitrary finiction of position in four-space. Here the

factor e h (where -e is the charge of the electron, c is the speed of light, and h/2n is
the quantum of action), has been absorbed in
These gauge transformations may look similar to the earfier scale transformations of his
unified theory, but they are actually quite dinerent: the argument of the exponential is purely
imaginary, not r d , as was suggested by Schrodinger and London, and the transformations are
associated with wave- fnctions, not the rnetriq4'

... the exponent of the factor multiplying $ is not real but pure imaginary. $ now
plays the role that Einstein's ds did before. It seems to me that this new principle of
gauge-invariance, that derives not fiom specdation but fkom experiment, shows that
electromagnetism is an accompanying phenornenon, not of the gravitation, but of the
material wave-function represented by &48
Weyl emphasized that the requirement of gauge invariance was related to the unobservability

of wave functions and the fact that it is their squares $*+, that have direct physicd
significan~e?~
Even though gauge invariance now applies to the wave-fbnction, for Weyl,
the principle is stilI set within the context of gravitation.

Since gauge invariance involves an arbitrary function X(x), it has the character of
general relativity, and can only be understood in this conte~t.~*
For Weyl, both the gravitational and the electromagnetic fields are related to a local
symmetry, entirely within the spirit of the gauge concept In this paper, Weyl attempts to

incorporate the Dirac theory into the scheme of general relativity? He takes

MO-component spinor equations of the Dirac type for electrons and protons as primary, and
then, introducing the tetrad f o d s r n , and introducing the requirements of local variation, he

introduces gravitation. Finally, by requiring local gauge invariance with bis new principle
goveming the transformations of electromagnetic potentials, he is able to derive

The tetrad formalisru had been developed by Einstein a year earlier, in a M e r e n t

context, but it proved idedy suited for Weyl's purpose." Mead of relying on the g,

fomalism, the metric is established at a world point by a system of vectors e(a), where e(l),

e(2), and e(3) are red space-like vectors, which constitute a left-handed Cartesian coordinate

system, and e(O)/i is a real time-like vector in the futlne direction?' In this system of
tetrads, characterized by surteen components, a coordinate transformation A can be interpreted

as a rotations of the axes of the tetrad The tetrad allows the incorporation of spinors through
the introduction of extra components: Weyl introduces four real components x, @=O, l,2,3),
so that the components of e(a)in this system are designated @(a). In this system, Weyl can
describe the Dirac spinor $ by means of its components $i+,~;,~,-,$2-."

A vector t at P

can then be written in the form,

tP=E t ( 0 1 ) eP(d

(29)
By allowng the tetrads fieedom to rotate at different points, Weyl is able to implement the
a

local transformations which provide gauge invariance,

The loosening (Lockemng) of the rigid relationship between the tetrads at different
point converts the gauge factor et', which remains arbitrary with respect to
fiom a
constant to an arbitrary b c t i o n of space-the. In other words, only through the
Ioosening of the rigidity does the established gauge-invariance become
understandable?

+,

This loss of rigidity means that the spinor components J., and & are no longer completely

detemiined by the tetrad, and this arbitrariness of the gauge factor actually forces the

introduction of the electromagnetic potential,

We corne now to the critical part of the theory. In rny opinion, the orgin and
necessiv (der Ursprung tin die Niendigkeit) for the electromagnetic field is the
following. The components $l and $z are, in facf not uniquely determined by the
tetrad, but only to the extent that they can still be multiplied by an arbitrary "gauge
factor" (Eichfuktor) e"". The transformation of the $ induced by a rotation of the
tetrad is determined only up to such a factor- In special relativity, one must regard
this gauge factor as a constant because here we have only a single point-independent
te-d.
Not so in generai relativity, every point has its own tetrad and hence its own
arbitmry gauge factor, becawe by the removal of the Ligid comiection betweai t e t d s
at different points, the gauge factor necessariiy becomes an arbitrary fiinction of
position?

Thus, electromagnetisn is derived fiom the principle of gauge invariance.

The reinterpreted gauge invariance is stiU closely connected with the conservation of
elecaic charge, as it was in 1918, but rhis time the link is even stronger.

... the fact that the action integral is undtered by the infinitesimal varations,

where h is an arbitrary transformation fnction, signifies the identical fbifihent of a

dependence between the materiai and electromagnetic laws which arise fiom the action
integral by variations of the $ and 6,respectively. It means that the consemation of
electricity is a double consequence of them, that it follows fiom the laws of matter as
well as electri~ity.~'

In this paper, Weyl was aiming to make the resemblance between gravitation and
electromagnetism manifest, and he explicitly demonstrated the similarty between the

derivation of the charge conservation law, and the energy-momentum conservation laws fiom
invariance with respect to both general coordinate transformations and Lorentz ~ s f o r m a t i o r s
of the tetrad?

For Weyl, this is one the paper's most appealuig features. He regards the

gauge invariance as correct because,

".-.it originates so naturally in the arbittanness of the

gauge-factor in $ and makes the connection between the eqerimentdly observed gaugeinvariance and charge-conservation understandable...~

~ 5 9

In May 1930, Weyl gave his lecture "Geometry and Physics" at Cambridge, and it was

subsequently published in the N a t u w z i s s d # e n

the foIlowing year?

In the lecture, he

spoke against the program of unified geornetrized field theories with respect to its neglect of
quantum theory, although as we have seen, it was in this h e w o r k that the various aspects

of gauge symmetry and the concept of gauge fields had been di~coveredand deveIoped

Quantum mechanics needed to be reckoned with, and since the gauge nature of the
electromagnetic field had now been clarified, it was no longer enough to seek a unified
geometricd description of gravitation and electromagnetim,

... the electromagnetic field is more strongly linked to the matter field than to
gravitation ... if we are to speak of geometrization, then ... we must proceed fiom
geometrkition of the matter field. If this can be done, the electromagnetic field will
be obtained as a bonus."
Thus, gauge invariance fkorn this time forward, was to be associated with the new quantum
theory, in contrast to the older gauge symmetry with flowed fkom an extension of the theory

3. Concluding remarks

Eleven yens after Weyl's original theory, it was established that the electromagnetic
field is associated with a local gauge symmetry and has'a gauge nature. FoIlowing the work

of Kaluza, both KIein and Fock had discovered a relativistic generalization of the wave
equation, and Fock had discovered transformations of the wave equation involving the

unknown, fifth coordinate. This was liked to a property of quantum orbits which

Schr6dinger had noticed in Weyl's geometry. Ushg this resuit, London was able to
reinterpret Weyl's theory: it was no longer liaked with transformations of the metric, but it
was now associated with an imaginary transformation of the wave-function The original

theory of 1918 had been mathematically appeahg, but it was in direct contlict with

experiment. London's reinterpretation had brought Weyl in 1929 to reintroduce gauge

invariance now as aprinciple nom which electrornagnetism could be derived. Afthough its
ongins were in an extension o f the general theory of relativity, gauge symmetry was now

comfortably set within the contes of quantum mechanics.

1,

Klein (1926a).

Although Klein does not reference Weyl, recall that for Weyl
(1918a), only ratios of g,, had physical meaning.

2.

Recall that Kaluzals problems had revolved around the

interpretation of the g,, term, but Klein ha incorporated this into
the electrodynamic potential.

4,

5.
T h i s derivation appears i n Klein (1926a), but
explanation is provided in Klein (1926b)-

7.

Klein (l926b), p - 516.

8.

Klein (1926a), p. 906.

9.

Fock (1927).

a clearer

10 .

Fock claims t h a t his method was the generalization, or

extension, of an Ansatz he had made in previous w o r k , to which he
r e f e r s to in a footnote. [Fock (lgS6a)J
Fock does not reference Klein or Kaluza, but he references
H. Mandel (1926), who references the two of t h e m .
11.

12. Later, it became clear that t h e electron possessed spin, and

so Fockrs scalar relativistic wave-equation does not describe an
electron, but it does describe a spinless p a r t i c l e .
Since this
same equation was also obtained by Oskar Klein (1926a) and Walter
Gordon (1926), it is now known as t h e Klein-Gordon-Fock equation,
although it is often referred to as j u s t the Klein-Gordon equation-

13.

Fock wrote the equations in a slightly different form,

Although Fock chose to mite the transformations with A and @

separately, Minkowski, i n 1907, had already written the
electromagnetic potential
as a four-vector
(A,i@,) - [Pauli
(1921), p . 791
F o c k (1926), p

Fock noticed that when he expressed the

Laplace equation in ,
it rernained invariant under the new
transformations, as well as Lorentz transformations, but the fifth
coordinate did n o t appear (although partial derivatives w i t h
respect to t h e fifth-coordinate did) 14.

228-

17.
It is c u r i o u s that Fock made no mention at al1 of Weyl's
theory, since Schrodinger was enamoured with i t . Under a quantum
mechanical reinterpretation of the theory, Fockrs transformations
were soon to become gauge transformations.
18.

Much later, i n 1950, Schddinger wrote a book on general

relativity, which, to this day, rernains a masterful exposition of

the subject. The influence of Weyl upon him is very clear f r o m t h e
structure of the book.
Instead of starting with the standard
metrical explanation, Schrodinger builds up his explanation from
the af ine comection, which was popularized, throughout the
physics community, by Weyl. [Schrodinger ( 1 9 5 0 ) 1
19.

Schrodinger (1922)-

Schrodinger refers to the 1 9 2 1 edition of Raum-Zeit-Mat e r i e ,

in which Weyl mites that under parallel transfer, a displaced
distance is generated, d l = - I d @ , where d@=eidxp Note that Weyl
first wrote this equation out explicitly in 1919-[Weyl
(1919), p . 1041 U n d e r a repeated parallel transfer subject to this
condition, this length becomes
20.

1 =l,e

-PLloe -fi&

In 1921, Pauli gave a discussion of this as well. [ P a u l i

p . 1931

(1921),

Schrodinger relates the Weyl proportionality factors

four electromagnetic potentials as follows:

21.

ei

the

where e is the elementary quantum of electric charge in CGS

22. Schrodinger ( 1 9 2 2 ) ~p . 1423.
For example, Bohr's quantum condition for the unperturbed
Kepler motion was,

where r is the period of the orbital motion, and T is the timeaveraged kinet ic energy. In accordance with the virial theorem,

where V is the e l e c t r i c potential of the nucleus, we have,

Since the f i e l d of the nucleus in t h i s case is purely

electrostatic, we have A=O, and so the argument of the exponential
factor is ,

by substitution, we obtain the relation

which is the desired result. [Schrdinger (1922),- p p , 14-15]

Schrodinger (1922), p . 22.

Schrodinger (1922), p . 22.
(19221, p . 23.

Schrodinger is not, however, convinced

two choices.

the independence

28

Schrdinger (1922), p , 23

30.

Raman and Forman (1969) p. 3 0 4 .

31.

London (1927a)-

32-

London (1927b)-

Pauli (1921) and Schrdinger (1922) both have a negative sign

in the corresponding equation, but it is merely a m a t t e r of
convention33.

London has made a distinction between the factors of position

@ and the electromagnetic potential 0- He generously attributes
this distinction to Weyl, who did not make it e x p l i c i t himself.
34.

35-

London (lgS7b). p , 376,

36.

London (IgSb),. p. 377.

37.

London (1927b). p. 377,

38. In standard non-relativistic Hamiltonian theory, the HarniltonJacobi equation takes the form,

where

Vw+
For non-relativistic particles moving in an electromagnetic field,
the Hamilton-Sacobi equation becomes,

with the relativistic generalization,

which
is
equivalent
to
the
equation
London- COVRaifeartaigh (1997). p. 19.1

as

used

by

T h i s means that W must be additively p e r i o d i c w i t h a period

equal to an i n t e g r a l m u l t i p l e of Planck's constant h. [London
(l927b) , p. 3771
39 .

40.

Weyl assumed t h a t the f a c t o r was unity.

To d e r i v e t h i s r e s u l t , Klein adds a f a c t o r t o t h e w a v e f u n c t i o n w h i c h Fock used to introduce t h e proper tirne r ,

41-

and s o t h e full w a v e f u n c t i o n become,

Taking t h e r a t i o g i v e s ,

London then substitutes

mechanical motion,

in

the

group

velocity

of

the

wave

g i v i n g the result,

and using the Hamilton-Jacobi equation, t h e desired result follows.

London notes that t h e wave-function tu. is analogous to the

f o u r - p o t e n t i a l s in i t s appearance in v a r i a t i o n a l problems, as
discussed e a r l i e r by SchrodingerJLondon (1927b), p . 386.1
44,

Weyl (1931a}, pp. 100-1. Note t h a t for Weyl, "matterI1 meant

charged rnicroscopic p a r t i c l e s whose motion was described by
Schrodinger o r Dirac equations.

45.

Weyl (1929a), p , 331- Once again, Weyl does not mite these
transformations as equations, although the meaning is the same- He
writes,
. . . the equations rernain invariant when one makes the
simultaneous substitutions
v by eUp
and
f, by f,-dWdx,
where A is understood to be an arbitrary function in fourspace.
46.

47. In 1931, Weyl wrote, "Already at the tirne when 1 advanced my

old theory, 1 had the feeling that the qauge factor must have the
form efi- However, at that tirne, 1 was naturally unable to find any
geometrical justification for such a choice- The studies of
SchrCIdinger and London have confirmed this idea in the process of
an ever clearer recognition of the connection between the problem
and quantum theory."Weyl (1931b), p . 57.

Weyl (1931a), p. 215. Note that Weyl refers to

a potential
because of its unobservability. Recall that London referred to
Schrodingerrs as a potential.
49.

50.

Weyl (l929a), p . 331.

52. Einstein (1928). Einstein developed the tetrad formalism in

the context of distant-parallelism, one of his many efforts towards
a unified field thef r o m 1923 until w e l l into the thirties and
beyond- Weyl criticized distant parallelism as an tcartificial
geometry", as he did not understand the force that could possibly
keep the local tetrads at different points and in rotated positions
in a rigid relationship.[Weyl (1929a) p. 3311
This formalism, however, proved to be ideally suited for
generalizing Dirac s equation to Riemannian spaces , that is , for
linking spinors with a gravitational field. Independently of Weyl.
Fock and Iwanenko (1929b) also used the tetrad formalism for this
purpose. See Vizgin (1994), Chapter 5.

53 -

Weyl (1929a), p - 334-

54.
Actually, Weyl preferred a two-component theory because he
thought that the Dirac theory gives twice as many energy levels as
necessary. Weyl had his own way of dealing with the negative
energy problern Dirac was facing. He believed that by going over to
the two-component form of the theory, one would be able to
eliminate the lrextraItlevels, which he interpreted as the energy
levels of a "positive electron"In Weyl's words, T t is
reasonable to expect that in the two component pairs of the Dirac
field, one pair should correspond to t h e electron and the o t h e r t o
the protonFurthemore, there should appear two electrical
conservation laws, which ( a f t e r quantization) should state the
separate conservation of the number of electrons and protonsThese would have t o correspond to a two-fold gauge invariance,
involving two new a r b i t r a r y functions. [Weyl (1929a), p . 3321
Weyl continues, Ir . . . the formal requirements of group theory,
independently of t h e field-equations t h a t are to be brought into
agreement with observation, f o r c e the number of components to be
raised rom t w o to four, W e shall see that two components suffice
if
the requirement of
left-right symmetry
(parity) is
dropped." [Weyl (19294 , p. 3321
Thus, in 1929, Weyl's spinor formulation excluded the llnear
implernentation of parity, which at the t i m e , was considered a
disadvantage. After the discovery of parity violation in 1956,
there was a revival of interest in Weyl spinors, or chiral spinors,
as they came to be known, since they are eigenstates of the
chirality, or helicity.

55.

Weyl (l929a), pp. 331-32-

56.

Weyl (l929a), p.

57.

Weyl (1929b), p. 218.

348.

58.
Although Weyl did not refer to N o e t h e r , this work was a
special case of Noethertstheorem.
Like Wigner before him, Weyl
made a result of Noether's theorem familiax t o physicists. He
managed to exhibit the analogy between the energy-momentum and
electromagnetic conservation laws in the context of field theory,
with the aid of the tetrad formalism [ W e y l (1929a), pp. 341-43.1

See a l s o Vizgin (19941, pp- 298-99-

60.

Weyl

61 -

W e y l (l93lb), p . 5 8 -

(1931b).

VI. Conservation Laws and Nuclear Interactions (1930-58)

1. The confinuous spectmm of 8-decay
i, Bohr and enerm conservation

On 8 May 1930, Neils Bohr gave his Faraday lecture to the Chernical Society of
London. In this lecture, he reviewed the current situation in nuclear physics, and he discussed
the problems of nuc1ea.r structure. At the t h e , empirical evidence fiom a-scattering had led

to the belief that nucIei are b d t up of protons and electrons.' Although this hypothesis led
to decent results for calculations of binding energy, confinement of electrons within a volume
of nuclear dimensions gave rise to quantum mechanical difflculties. F d e r r n o r e , it was
unclear how the protons and electrons were held together in the nucleus. Why for instance,
did four protons and two electrons hold together to form a stable helium nucleus, or a-

particle? The structure of heavier nuclei was even more complicated, although it could be
somewhat simplined by treating the a-particles as building blocks-'

Although the main source of experimental meanrrements was nuclear disintegrations,

spectral analysis provided important dues to nuclear structure as weU. From hyperfine
structure, nuclear magnetic moments and angular mornenta were detennined, and fiom the

intensity variations in band spectra, nuclear statistics were iderred. Helium nuclei obeyed

Bose statistics, as was expected for a system containuig an even number of particIes under
Pauli's exclusion principle. The next nucleus to be measured was the nitrogen nucleus, NI4.
As it was thought to be composed of an uneven number of particles, 14 protons and 7

electrons, it was expected to obey Fermi statistics, but it did not It obeyed Bose statistics
instead.'

This was problernatic, as Ehrenfest and Oppenheimer had just proven that a

composite system obeys Bose or Fermi statistics depending on whether the nurnber of
component particles is even or odd? Bohr understood this discrepancy to be indicative of the
limitation of regarding an intra-nuclear eIectron as a separate dynamitai entity,

Strictly speaking, we are not even justined in saying that a nucleus contains a definite
number of electrons, but only that its negative electrdication is quai to a whole
number of elementary mits, and in this sense, the expulsion of a P-ray fiom a nucleus
may be regarded as the creation of an electron as a mechanical entity.'

The 8-decay spectrum was p d i n g . Nthough the rate of decay could be predicted
with a simple probability d e , just as in the case of a-decay, the energy liberated within a

decay was found to Vary within a wide continuous range. This was in sharp contrast with the
energy emitted in an a-particle disintegration, which was nxed for each element, as expected

for a two-body decay. This was an extremely serious problem, and for Bohr, it threw the
conservation of energy into d o u b ~ ~

At the present time of atomic theory, however, we may say that we have no argument,
either empincal or theoretical, for upholding the energy principle in the case of @-ray
disintegrations and are even led to complications and difficdties in trying to do s a 7
Thus, the two great sturnbling blocks of nuclear theory were the quantum-mechanical
difficulties stemming fiom the confinement of electrons within a volume of nuclear

that electrons in the nucleus could not be describeci within the fiamework of quantum

mechanics, that they lost their property of determining the statistics and spin of the nucleus as
a whole, and that energy was not conserved when electrons were involved in nuclear

processes. Pauli, on the other hand, was unwilling to abandon energy conservation, and so he
proposed a radical new solution.

ii. Pauli and the neutrino (1 930)

The principle of energy conservation was saved by Wolfgang Pauli. In a Letter to a
group of experts on radioactivity at Tbingen Universv, dated 4 December, Pauli niggested
that the law of conservation of energy would remain valid if the emission of B-rays were

accompanied by an as yet undetected unknown neutrd particle, not yet observe& which was
carrying away the missing energy,

Dear radioactive ladies and gentlemen,

(Liebe Radioaktive Damen und Herren)
I have corne upon a desperate way out regarding the "f&el' statistics of the N- and the
~i'-nuclei, as well as the continuous 8-spectmm., in order to save the alternation law of
statistics and the energy law. To wit, the possibility that there could exist in the
nucleus electrically neutral particles, which I shall c d neutrons, which have spin-%
and satisQ the exclusion principle and which are funher distinct fiom light-quanta in
that they do not move with light-velocity. The mass of the neutrons should be of the
same order of magnitude as the electron mass and in any case not larger than
0.0 1 fimes the proton mass. The continuous B-spectnim would then become
understandable from the assumption that in P-decay a neutron is emitted dong with the
electron, in such a way that the sum of the energies of the neutron and the electron is
COnstant,...
For the time being, 1 dare not publish anything about the idea ... 1 admit
that rny way out may not seem very probabIe a @on' since one would probably have
seen the neutrons a long time ago if they exist. But only he who dares wins ...8
It is not surprising that Pauli was unwilluig to rush into print, because at the time, only three
particles were known, the electron, the proton, and the photon, and of those, only the photon
had been predicted upon theoretical grounds.

Pauli made this suggestion public at a June 1931 symposium on "The present status of
Pauli spoke on "Problems of hyperfine
the problem of nuclear structure" in ~asadena~
structure", and it was clear that he intended his neutron t o be a simultaneous solution to the
problems of both nuclear consitution and 8-decay. Since the new particle weighed very littie,
and it bound to nuclear matter, Pauli envisioned it combining with protons and electrom

within the nucleus. The electrons would still compensate the charge of the nudeus, wnile the
neutrons would compensate the nuclear spin. In October of that same year, the Comegno di

FisrCa nucleure took place in Rome, At the meeting, Samuel Goudsmit gave a talk on
hyperfine structure in which he rnentioned Pauli's neutron,

".-.which rnight remove present

difficulties in nuclear structure and, at the same tirne, in the explanabon of the /3-

spe~tnim."'~Enrico Fermi was in the audience, and after the paper, he spoke to Pauli
privately. Fermi was impressed with the idea of the new particle, and in a discussion with bis
colleagues h m Rome, it was Fermi who suggested the Itaiian name neuh.ino.' He wanted to
differentiate Pauli's light neutral particle fiom the idea of a heavy neutral particle-"

i. Chadwick and the neutron ( 1 932)

In February 1932, James Chadwick published a letter in Nature makig a daim for the
possible existence of a neutron. This was a heavy particle that Chadwick had been looking

for since 1920, when Rutherford had suggested the possibility of a tightly bound combination
of a proton and an electron which might be a component in the structure of heavier n u ~ l e i - ' ~

In 1930, Bothe and Becker showed that when bombarded with a-particIes, boron and
beryllium gave off a powemil radiation, whch they had assumed initidy to be -y-rayd3 In
late 1931, however, Mme, Curie-Joliot and Mt JoIiot showed this radiation to be even more
penetrating than y-radiation, capable of ejecting protons fiom matter containing hydrogen at

speeds up to nearly 3x10' cm,sec. The Curie-Joliots had interpreted this as a process
analogous to the Compton effect, concIuding that the beryllium radiation was a quantum of

very high energy, on the order of 50x106 eV.

Chadwick did not fike this conclusion, because it was difficult to reconde with the
conservation of energy and momentum, and so he offered an alternative,
It is evident that we must either rehquish the application of the conservation of
energy and momentum in these collision or adopt another hypothesis about the nature
of the radiation. If we suppose that the radiation is not a quantum radiation, but
consists of particles of mass very nearly equal to that of the proton, all the difficulties
c o ~ e c t e dwith the collisions disappear-"

He reasoned that &ce the new radiation was extremely penerating, it must have a charge
very smaii compared with that of an eiectron- He then offered what he thought was the

simplest hypothesis, that the radiation conssted o f new particle consisting o f a proton and
electron in close combination, givhg a net charge of zero, and a mass slightly Iess than that
of the hydrogen atom. He concluded, "...the neutron hypothesis gives an immediate and
simple explmation of the experimental facts; it is consistent in itself and it throws new light

on the problem of nuclear structure." Is

ii. Heisenberg and exchange forces (1932)

Werner Heisenberg was quick to see the advantages of the neutron. His fist paper on
nuclear structure of June 1932 is an effort to describe the structure of nuclei, according to the

laws of quantum mechanics, in tenns of the interaction between protons and neutrons. In the
paper, he assumes fiom the outset that nuclei are made up of protons and neutrons, and that

they do not contain electrons. This le& to a considerable simplification of nuclear theory.

By taking the neutron to obey Fermi statistics, with a spin %fi, Heisenberg bypasses the
diffcuties of the statistics of NI4 and the uncertahty o f nuclear moments, and he is able to

reduce the difficulties of the theory of 6-decay to a single question, under what circumstances

c m a neutron decay into a proton and ele~tron?'~

For Heisenberg, the neutron was not precisely a bound state of a proton and an
electron, but under certain conditions, it could spiit into these two components,
If we wanted to descnbe the neutron as composed of proton and electron, the electron
would have to obey Bose statistics and have spin zero, but we do not consider this any
fuaher. The neutron will be taken as an independent fundamental partide which,
however, c m split, under favourable conditions, into a proton and an electron,
violating the law of conservation of energy and momenhim."
In fact, the interaction between neutrons and protons c m be treated as an exchange back and
foah of a spinless electron-

This cm be illustrated by irnagining the exchange of electrons without spin which

obey the laws of Bose-statinics. It may be more correct, however, to interpret the
exchange integral J(r) as a fundamental property of the neutron-proton pair, without
reducing it to the movement of electrons."

Heisenberg treats the attractive force between the proton and neutron as a position exchange
(Platmechsel), in analogy with the van der Waals force binding a hydrogen atom and a

positive hydrogen ion together within the Hc ion by electron exchange. Similady, he
postulates an attractive force given by the function K(r) between two neutrons, in analogy

widi the attractive force between two hydrogen atoms in an H, rnolecule. Note that apart

from these two forces, neutron-proton and neutron-neutron, there is no other nuclear force.
Between protons, Heisenberg assumed the only the standard Coulomb repulsion e 2 f d 9
Heisenberg had noticed that in the kinetic energy and.the exchange energy ternis of the
nuclear Hamiltonian, there was a symmetry between protons and neutrons.20 To make it
easier to write down the Hamiltonian frmction, Heisenberg introduced a new variable

alongside the position coordinates and the spin, called

which is a number which takes on

the values +1: +l for a neutron, and -1 for a proton?

This is usefbI, because under charge

into $=- 1,
exchange, there are transitional elements in the Hamiltonian that change pE=+l
which are embodied in the following matrices:

Although these matrices resemble the Pauli matrices, the coordinates t, 9,and

refer to a

different space. In analogy to the mathematics of spin, this vansable was later referred to as
p-spin, although it came to be lcnown as isotopic spin, and later still, as isospin Initially,

some physicists felt that this formalism was too complicated. For exampie, Ettore Majorana,
in his paper of 1933, was pleased that he could avoid those "troublesome p-spin

coordinates"."

The formalism, however, was soon to prove very useful.

With respect to kinetic energy and exchange energy, the Hamiltonian is symmetric
with respect to protons and neutrons." Heisenberg's Harniltonian term for the exchange

interaction is,
J(rJ ( p f * p r + p ; p ; )
(2)
where r 3 1 r,-r,l, and J(r,) is the strength of the exchange interaction. For either two protons
or two neutrons, this operator is zero, but if one of the pair is a proton, and the other is a
neutron, this term exchanges their isotopic spin. Heisenberg goes on to consider the stability
of the nucleus. He pictures it as a structure containhg generally a few more neutrons than
protons and in which pairs of protons can bind together with pairs of neutrons to form
particuiady stable particles, that is, oiparti~les.~~
He reasons that if a nucleus contains only

neutrons, then these neutrons will transform to protons by fl-ray emission until the energy

gained by adding a proton is exactly the same as the energy used to remove the neutron. In
other words, a nucleus is unstable against 8-disintegration if the replacement of a neutron in
102

the nucleus by a proton makes the energy of the correspondhg atom smder?
The first published statement of the Pauli's neutrino hypothesis appeared in the
discussion of Heisenberg's thrd papa on nuclear structure at the Solvay conference, in
Brussels on October 1933.'~ M e r the paper, Pauli commented that b o t . spin and statistics
conservation would be provided by the neutrino if it had spin % and Fermi statistics, and of
course, energy and momentum conservation would aiso be g~aranteed.~'As to the m a s of
the object, Pauli lefi this question open Enrico Fermi was present at this confrence, and

although he restricted his comments to problems of nuclear forces he must have thought
about the 8-decay theory, because his e
s
t paper on the subject was published only two
months d e r this conference.

iii- Fenni and field theorv (19331

Until Fermi's theory of @-decay,the idea of the neutrino had been a vague hypothesis,

and a formal theory had not yet been constructed. When Pauli fmt suggested the particle in
1930, electrons were believed to exist in the nucleus, and the hypothetical neutral particle was
considered as another nuclear constituent, with a smaU but finite rest m a s , Fermi had been

thoroughly studying Dirac's quantum theory, and he combined it with Heisenberg's spin
formalism to constmct a theory in which electrons did not exist in the nucleus before the
decay at all, but were created, together with neutrinos, in the process of e m i ~ s i o n . ~ ~
Fermi intended to announce the results of his 6-decay theory in a letter to Nature, but
he was rejected! The editor thought that his theory contained, "...abstract speculations too

remote fiom physical reality to be of interest to the readers.""

In December 1933, he

submited a five-page paper, containhg all of his essential results to Ricerca Scientrfca,
where it was promptly published. Longer papers were sent to Nuovo Cimento and Zeitschrr3

fur Physik in early 1934."

Fermi constnicted a quantum field theory of B-decay, in which electrons or neutrinos
could be created or destroyed. This meant that the total number of electrons and neutrinos,

like the number of photons in the theory of radiation, is not necessarily constant. During j3decay, eIectrons and neutrinos can be created in emission fiom the micleus, just as photons
can be created in emission fiom an excited atom, accorduig to Dirac's theory."

Fermi

recognized that it was difficult to explain how electrons or neutrinos could be bound in orbits
of nuclear dimensions, so following Heisenberg, he assumed that only heavy particles, protons

and neutrons, should exid innde the nucleus?

He considered neutrons and protons to be

two quantum states of a single heavy partide, corresponding to the two values of the "inner

coordinatenp, t1 for a neutron, and

-1 for a proton.

Fermi then contructed a Hamihonian

such that each transition fiom neutron to proton would be associated with the creation of an

electron and a neutrino, while the transition of a proton to a neutron would be associated wth

the disappearance of an electron and neutrino, thus enniring charge

FolIowuig the Dirac-Jordan-Klein method of second quantization, Fermi introduced
operators for the probability amplitudes of electrons $ and the neutrinos 6, and th&
correspondhg conjugates 4, and 6'3 He also introduced two operators Q and Q
' which
acted on the bivalent variable p to effiect the transitions fiom proton to neutron, and ficorn
neutron to proton, re~pectively.)~

The probability amplitudesG,I and 4 correspond to the sums of states,

where asand a,' are creation and annihilation operators for electrons, and,

where b, and bu' are creation and annihilation operators for neutrinos.

The total energy of the system cm be written in a Hamiltonian, with terms for the
energies of the heavy partides, the energies for the light particles, and the interaction between
heavy and light particles. For transitions, it is the interaction Hamiltonian which is important

It must contain terms Q*a,'b,'

which can couple the trandiomation of a neutron into a proton

with the creation of an electron and a neutrino, and dso tems Qa-4,which can couple the

reverse process. Fermi writes this interaction in general,

where c., and c,'

are quantities which can depend upon the coordinates and momenta of the

heavy particles.

To specify the interaction Hamiltonian U , more precisely, Fermi uses the criterion of
simplicity. He notes that the choice of Hamiltonian is limited by the invariance under rotation

or translation of the space coordinates. Disregardhg corrections due to relativity and spin for
the moment, he writes down the simplest choice available,

Hi-gk2$

(d$ (XI+a'$' (XI6'( X I

(7)

where g is a constant with the dimensions L ' M P , where L,.M,T are length, m a s , and tirne.

Fermi points out explictly that there are many possible forms of an interaction
Harnikonian which c m lead to 8-decay pro cesse^?^ Any scalar expression Like,

L (pl fi (x)M ( p ) @ (x)

N ( p ) +conj.
(8)
where L(p), M(p), and Nb)represent functions of momentum for the heavy particles would

be just as good. Yet since expression (7) is in agreement with experiment, Fermi is happy
with it. Ali that is Ieft for him to do is to generalize it so that electrons and neutrinos can be
treated relativistidy. He replaces the $ and

t$

fnctions with Dirac spinors, and by analogy

with the interactions of charges and currents with the eiectromagnetic field, he chooses vector

interactions."' This gives him the interaction Hamiltonian,

H i - g ~W*y~+Q'Vy@*i

(9)

where $ and 6 are the conjugate spinors, and y is a 4x4 matrix, as required by the Dirac

To calculate the probability of B-decay, Fermi treats the interaction Hamiltonian as a

perturbation of the fulI Hamiltonian. He introduces the matrix element,

where v,, and un correspond to wave-fiinctions for protons and neutrons bound in nuclear

matter. The decay probabil*

that a 6-decay takes place during the tirne t, with transition of

the electron into the state s is then proportional to the square of this matrix element,

where W is the dinerence in energy of the neutron- and proton-states, and H, is the energy of
the electrod9 Fermi noticed that the matrix element was either close to 1, when the initial

and h a I nuclear states had the same anguIar momentum, or it was zero, when the angular

momenta were different Fermi interpreted the vanishhg of the ma& element as indicating
forbidden (verboten) transitions, not strictl'y forbidden, but with a much slower rate of decay
than that of allowed transitions.'

Fermi went on to calculate the velocity distribution curve

of the emitted 8-rays, and his results were in good agreement with experiment, so good in'
fact, that they soon convinced Bohr that Pauli's neutrino hypothesis was correct, and that

energy conservation should be misted &er ail?

In backto-back letters to Nature in June 1934, Igor Tamm and Dmitrij Iwanenko
made a cornparson of the theones of Heisenberg and Fermi?' Heisenberg had huited that

the charge exchange was somehow related to the B-decay process, but he did not yet have a
rnechanism for it. This rnechanism, however, had been provided by Fermi! Tamm and
Iwanenko noted that Fermi's theory provides the possibility of deducing the exchange forces
between neutrons and protons nrggested by Heisenberg. They argued that the creation and

subsequent annihilation of an electron and neutrino in the field of a proton and a neutron
wodd Iead to an exchange interaction between the two particies, in the same way as the

Coulomb interaction between two electrons is caused by the exchange of a photon between

them. The magnitude of the exchange energy turned out to be,

where g is Fermi's couphg constant. As this is far too small to account for the interactiom
between neutrons and protons, Tamm had concluded,

Our negative resuit indicates that either the Fenni theory needs substantial modification
(no simple one seems to alter the results matenally), or that the origin of the forces
between neutrons and protons does not lie, as would appear fkom the original
suggestion of Heisenberg, in their transmutations, as considered in detail by Fermi.'3
Although Tamm and Iwanenko were unsuccessfid, they provided Yukawa with an important

iv. Yukawa's heaw article (1 934)

Later that same year, Hideki Yukawa synthesized the theories of Heisenberg and

Fermi. The problem witt Fermi's theory, as shown by Tamm and Iwanenko, was that the

107

neutron-proton interaction was not nearly enough to account for the binding energies of the
neutron and the proton within the nucleus. In order to avoid this diffTcuIty, Yukawa proposed
that a neutron could change into a proton by a process different than Fermi's B-decay

mechanism: the negative charge could be transfened by a new heavy particle to a nearby
proton, thus transfomiing it into a neutron.
The transition of a heavy particle fkom a neutron state is not always accompanied by
the emission of light particles, that is, a neutrino and an electron, but the energy
liberated by the trausition is taken up sometlmes by another heavy particle, whch in
turn wilI be transfomed fkom proton state into neutron state?

If this process occrrrred with a large enough probabiIity, it couid account for the intense
interaction between neutrons and protons without affecting the srnail probability of 8-decay

Yukawa decided that this interaction between neutrons and protons could be described
by a new field of force, just as the interaction between charged particles is described by the

electromagnetic field. Furthexmore, this field should be associated by a mediating particle,

just as the electromagnetic field is associated with the photon, but with the special
requirement that it needed to interact more strongly with heavier particles than with light
particles, in order to explain why the interaction between neutrons and protons was so intense.
Yukawa attempted to describe this field between the neutron and the proton with a scalar
field U. He wanted an equation in analogy to the wave-fiinction for the electromagnetic
potential,
C

except that instead of the Coulomb potential, he wanted a potential which decreased more
rapidly with distance, expressed as,

where g is a constant with the dimensions of electric charge, and A is a constant with the

dimension L -' . This gives the vacuum equation,

In the presence of heavy particles, however, the U-tield causes transitions nom neutron state
to proton state. Yukawa borrows Heisenberg's matrices, c a h g them r-matrices,

where the neutron and proton States are denoted by r,=+l and z,=- 1 respectively- The
equahon descnbing a &mition fiom proton to neutron is then given by,"

where iI. and $ are the wave functions of the neutcon and proton. The conjugate function U is
used to describe the inverse transition fiom proton to neutron,

Yukawa says that a similar equation would hoid for a vector function describing the U-field,
in analogy to the electromagnetic vector potentiai, but since there is no correct relativistic
theory for the neutron and proton wave-functions, he is usng non-relativistic wave-fnctions
for them and neglecting spin anyway, and so using a Pfield scaiar is adequate?
Under these conditions, he is able to k t e down a symmetric Harniltonian exchange

interaction,

where pu and

are the momenta of the two particles, 2M-'Mn,+M,,and D--M~C'-M~C~This

Hamiltonian is equal to Heisenberg's, if we substiMe in the exchange integral,

(20)
L

excepting, of course, the interactions between neutrons and the electrostatic repulsion between
protons which are described by other Hamiltonian terms.

Yukawa then discusses the nature of the quanta of the U-field- Since the neutron and
proton both obey Fermi statistics, the new quantum must obey Bose satistics, and so it can be
quantized Like the electromagnetic field. Accordingly, the Law of conservation of charge

demands that the new U-particle must have charge +e or -e.

Finally, by identifying the range

parameter X as the Compton wavelength, Yukawa is able to calculate its masr, rn&dih.
Assuming h=5xlO-' cm-', he gets a value of about 200 electron masses. Yukawa is not

womed that such a Iarge particle has never been observed, because,

... in the ordinary nuclear transformation, such a quantum cannot be emitted into outer
space.... The reason why such massive quanta, if they ever exist, are not yet
discovered may be ascnbed to the fact that the m a s mu is so large that the condition
1 En-E,,, 1 >mU2is not fulfilled in ordinary nuclear transformation-"
Yukawa moves on to discuss 6-decay. The LI-particle can interact not only with heavy
particles (neutrons and protons), but also with light particles (electrons and neutrinos). M e r
it is emitted by a neutron, the U-particle, instead of being absorbed by a proton, may be
absorbed by a neutrino state of negative energy and then jump to an electron state of positive
energy? In diis case, an anti-neutrino and an electron would then be emitted
simultaneously fiom the nucleus. Therefore, Yukawa's theory matches Fermi's theory,
Fermi considered that an electron and a neutrino are emitted simultaneously from the
radioactive nucleus, but this is fonndy equivalent to the assumption that a Iight
particle moves fiom a neutrino state of negative energy to an electron state of positive
e11ergy4~

Furthemore, Yukawa's theory ais0 explains why the Fermi interaction is 1W8h e s weaker
than this new interaction. Because the U-field interacts with Iight particles, Yukawa needs an

extra term on the rght-side of equation (18),

where $ and 6 are the eigenfunctions of the electron and neutrino, respectively, and g' is a
new constant with the same dimensions as g- Yukawa obtains the matrix element,

corresponding to the double process: a heavy particle falIs nom the neutron state with the
eigenfunction u(r) into the proton state with the eigenfbnction v(r) and simultaneously a iight
particle jumps from the neutrino state q5k(r) of negative energy to the electron state &(r) of
positive energy. Since X is much larger than the wave numbers of the electron and neutrino

states, Yukawa treats the exponential fiuiction as a -hction multiplied by 47&.

7 matrix to pick out appropriate states,

Inserting a

Yukawa obtains,

which matches Fermi's renilt corresponding to the emission of a neutrino and an eIectron of
positive energy states, except that the f-or

41rgg"m' is substituted for Fermi's g. Taking the

experimental result 4 ~ ~ g ' / h ~0%m3erg,

=xl
with A=SXI O-" cm-', Yukawa h d s that g' is
about 10-8times as small as g. Yukawa is not sure why Fermi's constant g' is so much
s m d e r than the new constant g, but he thinks that it might be due to the dif5erence of masses
of light particles. This has observational consequences for the neutrino,

This means that the interaction between the neutrino and the electron is much smaller
than that between the neutron and the proton so that the neutrino wiiI be far more
p e n e t r a ~ gthan the neutron and consequently more difncult to observe?
111

Yukawa concluded that his arguments were only specdative, but thaf "...the massive quanta

may also have some bearing on the shower produwd by cosmic rays."'

v. Charge inde~endenceand isoto~icmin (1936.37)

In his first nuclear physics paper of 1932, Heisenberg had demonstrated nuclear forces
of short range between neutrons and protons and between neutrons and neutrons. Although
he did not introduce any proton-proton force, aside fiom electrostatic repdsion, he realized
that the approxirnate equality between the number of protons and neutrons in nuclei implied

that neutron-proton short-range forces could not be very dinerent fiom proton-proton forces.

Therefore, he was forced to assume the neutron-neutron force to be weak compared to the
neutron-proton force. In August 1936, however, it became clear that there was a short range
attractive proton-proton interaction comparable in strength wth the neutron-proton nteraction-

Three papers received by Physical Review within two days in that month mark major strides

forward in the understanding of nuclear interactions.

The fxst,by Tuve, Heydenburg, and Haftstad, announced evidence nom scattering
experiments for a proton-proton interaction at short distances which was a marked departure

fiom electromagnetic forces?

The second paper, by Breit, Condon, and Present gave an

analysis of these data and a cornparison with available proton-neutron scattering information.
They found that the interactions between protons was found to be nearly equal to the proton-

neutron force in the corresponding condition of relative spin orientation and angular

The proton-proton and proton-neutron interactions in 'S-states are found to be equal

within the experimental error. This suggests that interactions between heavy particles

are equai also in other states."

This paper marked the introduction of the idea of chmge independence,"

The close agreement between the empincal values of the proton-proton and neutronneutron interactions in %tates suggests that aside from Coulombian and spin effects
the interactions between heavy particles are independent of their charge and that the
apparent preference for equal numbers of protons and neutrons in the building up of
nuclei is conditioned more by the operation of the .exclusion principle than by the
greater vaiues of proton-neutron forces?
In the thud paper, Cassen and Condon reaized that Heisenberg's matrices, which they
denoted by

T,

are usefl for dealing with this equajity of forces:6

In this paper, we show how the use of a coordinate having two proper vaiues which
tells whether a particle is a proton or a neutron, together with the assumption of the
Pauli exclusion principle for dl the particles, gives a unified description of the various
types of exchange forces."
Cassen and Condon suppose that each heavy partide (proton or neutron) is descrbed by five

coordinates: three for the space coordinates, one for the spin, and a fifth coordinate

7,which

takes on the values kl, that is, +I if the particle is a proton, and -1 if it is a neutron.58
They cal1 T the character coordinate, and i d e n t e it with the component of a character vector

dong a chosen preferred direction, and although they emphasize the analogy with spin, they
make it explicit that the components of r do not refer to directions in space. Under

interchange of any of these coordinates, the wave-fiinction should be anti-symmetric,

We postulate that in an assembly of heavy particles, the wave fiinction has to be an&
all five of their coordinates.
We want to show that this gives a convenient formalism for working with nuclear
problems. 59
symmetric in al1 particles with respect to the exchange of

Cassen and Condon then apply this formalism to four d i f r e n t types of exchange forces
which had been proposed, not just Heisenberg's exchange of spin and charge, but also Wigner

forces (1932) which exchanged neither spin m r charge, Majorana forces (1933) which

exchanged charge but not spin, and Bartlett forces (1936) which exchanged spin but not
charge?

nius, although Cassen and Condon relied upon the r symmetry, their main

concern was phenomenology.

Wigner exptoited his symmetry to the fullest in 1937. Physically, the hypothesis of

charge independence means that nuclear forces between all pairs of heavy particIes are equal.
Wigner starts off his paper, "On the consequences of the symmetry of the nuclear
Harniltonian. .,"as follows,
Recent investigations appear to show that the forces between ail pairs of comituents
of the nucleus are approxknately equal. This makes it desirable to treat the protons
and neutrons on an equal footing.... Heisenberg introduced a variable r which we
shall c d the isotopic spin... The assumption that the forces between al1 pairs of
particles are equal is equivaient, then, to the assumption that they do not depend on 7
or that the Hamiltonian does not involve the isotopic spim6'
More precisely, this means that to take advantage of the isotopic spin symmetry, the
Hamiltonian operator may be wxitten in terms of space and spui variables alone, so that it
does not differentiate between neutrons and protons. This does not mean, however, that the
Harniltonian cannot be written another way. Alternatively, to highlight the spin symmetry
instead, the Hamiltonian can be written in terms of space and isotopic spin coordinates
done?

Wigner makes it clear that he is using group theory. He shows how charge
independence implies that nuclear forces are invariant under the group of isotopic spin

rotations, the group SU(^)? This allows Wigner to characterize multiplet systems of
nuclear spectra If a group of nuclear states has a total isotopic spin T,then there are 2T+l
states with the same energy, but with

T, values ranging fiom

system of two particles, with P l , there is a triplet of states;'

114

-2' to

+T.@ For instance, for a

pp, (pn-np)/l/2, and nn

(24)

Note that an isospin multiplet of levels is a set of levels, not within a single nucleus, but
within a set of isobark nuclei- This is why isotopic spin is often called isobark spin. AU

states within the ame multiplet have the same anguia.momentum, parity, and energy.
Wigner realizes that the energies are only approximately equal, because as Breit, Condon, and
Present noticed, the levels are split by the Coulomb repulnon between protons.
Wigner takes the symmetry even M e r . By treating the spin coordinates and isotopic
spin coordinates on an equal footing, he introduces the group SU(4).67 This combined

symmetry applies to the extent that nuclear forces depend neither upon the orientation of spin
nor upon the orientation of isotopic spin. Wigner uses the representations of these groups to
characterize the multiplet structure of nuclear spectra, similar to how he applied group theory
to atornic spectra years earlier.

3. From cosmic rays to accelerators

i. A new particle in cosmic ravs (1 93n

In March 1937, Neddermeyer and Anderson presented a paper, 'Note on the nature of
cosmic ray particles", in which their analysis of cosmic ray data suggested the presence of

particles with unit charge and mas intermediate between p and e,

There exist particles of unit charge but with a mass (which may not have a unique
value) larger than that of a normal fiee electron and much smaller than that of a
proton.. .68
They observed that these penetrating particles occurred with both positive and negative
charges, leading them to believe that,

"...they might be created in pairs by photons, and that

they might be represented as higher mass States of ordinary elect~ons."~~

Three months later, Oppenheimer and Serber sent a letter to the editor of PhysicaZ
Review suggesting that these recentiy discovered particles might in fact, be Yukawa's

... it has been suggested by Yukawa that the possibility of exchanging such particles of
intermediate mass would offer a more natural explmation of the range and magnitude
of the exchange forces between proton and neutron that the Fermi theory of the
electron-neutrino field?
This was the first mention of Yukawa's particle in the Western literature? In December

1937, Nicholas Kemmer sent a letter to Nature in which he acknowledged that it was

suggestive that this particle, which he called a "heavy electron" did give nuclear forces of the
correct range, but that the these forces had the wrong spin-dependence." Since Yukawa's
scalar field was insufficient, Kemmer suggested instead a vector field,

... a more satisfactory result can be obtained if one admits a vector wave function for
the new particle, such as was used by Proca Cl9361 in a different connection. Proca's
equations c m be quantized on lines completely analogous to the Pauli-Weisskopf
method Cl9341 for the scalar wave equation, and the resdting neutron-proton potential
can e a d y be determined."
On the following page of the same journal, a letter by Homi Bhabha appeared in which he

pointed out the consequences of treating the CI-particles as a vector field,

... the U-particles being charged, they m o t explain the close-range proton-proton
interaction. To formulate this, we would have to introduce a neutral particle N of
about the sarne mass Mu which obeys similar equations to those for the U-particles and
can be absorbed and ernitted when a proton jumps fiom one energy state to another.
The introduction of such a particle may not seem very arbitrary when we consider that
it would give us a symmetrical state of &S."
Thus, the neutral U-particle was the Grst particle predicted upon the grounds of symmetry.
Kemmer had already been thinking dong similar h e s . Earlier that year, before he

had learned of Yukawa theory, Kemmer had written about charge independence in comection
with a common mechanimi for Heisenberg's exchange theory and Fermi's theory?

Kemmer argued that in second order pemirbation theory and beyond, a charge-bearing field

would resuIt in interactions between like-particles only. Therefore, he decided that

Heisenberg's theory could not sirnply involve exchange of charged particies aione, but that it
must also involve a field with zero charge. He reasoned that, in line with Femii's theory,

... the emission of two electrons of opposite sign or of two neusinos by a proton or
neutron should be possiibe, in addition to the originalIy assumed em-ssionof one
electron together with one neutrino."
In fact, Kemmer went on to postulate that perhaps isotopic spin could be extended to the light
particles in such a way that the positron and neutrino would form a doublet, that is,

73

would

be +1 for the positron, and -1 for the neutrino. This remarkable idea was very prernahire,

and the magnitude of the forces did not work out correctly, but Kemmer's idea was

revitalized by Yukawa theory.

Not much was known, at the t h e , about the properties of the Yukawa particle, except
that its mass lay between that of the electron and the proton, and that it should decay nto an
electron or positron plus a neutrino, according to whether its charge was positive or
negative."

In his origial paper, Yukawa had described the U-field as a scalar particle,

which is a particle with zero spin?

In February 1938, Kemmer made a systematic

investigation of the possibilities of Yukawa's theory, showing how the characteristics of an

exchange interaction depended upon the spin and parity of the Yukawa partic~e.'~Kemmer
realized that the spin of the paaicIe needed to be integral, that is 2n times the spin of the
neutron or proton." Yukawa's equations then corresponded to 4,with the U-field having

positive parity. Kemmer drew out the consequences of a Yukawa particle that behaved iike a
pseudoscaiar, which dso has zero spin, but with negative partytYFinally, Kemmer considered
the two cases correspondhg to n=l, a vector part..dewith spin one and positive party, and a

pseudovector with spin one and negative parity.'2

A few months Iater, Kemmer realized that charge independence couId be accomted for
exuctly if the

Yukawa particle came in both charged and mcharged states." The biggest

hurdle he faced, in hs estimation, was to show that the neutral Yukawa particle was not its

own antiparticle,

... no relativistically invariant expression for the interaction is possible which would,
for instance, d o w the ernission of the "particle" only by neutrons, the "antiparticle"
only by protons. It is satisfactory, that it can be proved that the neutral antiparticIe
cm be completely eliminated fkom the theory, so that only a positive, a negative, and
one kind of neutral particle need be assurned to exist. In spite of the apparent
asymmetry of this procedure, the charge-independence d l ho1ds..."
This new idea holds for both the vector case and the scaiar cases? Up to smaU

electromagnetic corrections, a i i three of the particles would have the same mass. Hans Bethe
named this the "symmetrical theory"."

The following year, the term meson entered the

literature. Manuscripts presented to a cosmic ray symposium at Chicago contained no less

than six names, including "yukon"(!), but the editors decided upon "mesotron"."

None of the propertes of the meson had been experimentally tested yet In 1940,
Wiarns and Roberts observed, in a cloud chamber, the decay of a negative meson into an

electrod8 This was to be expected according to Yukawa's prediction that the negatively
charged meson could take part in &de~ay.'~ The correspondin&decay of the positive
meson had not yet been observed, but based on these two types of decay, Tomonaga and
Araki predicted that positive and negative Yukawa mesons should produce very different
118

effects when passing through dense matter?

Slow positive mesons traversing matter should

prefer to decay rather than be absorbed by a nucleus, since Coulomb repulsion hinders the
meson reaching the nucleus, while negative Yukawa mesons, on the other hand, should
strongly prefer absorption to decay. If this were tme, then practically all the decay processes

observed should be due to positive mesons.

This prediction was shattered by the Converti-Pancini-Piccioniexperiment in

December 1946, which investigated the difference in absorption of positive and negative

mesons by dense materiais, using iron and carbon as absorbas. In iron, the mesons behaved
as expected. In carbon, however, negative mesons were not absorbed nearly as much as

predicted.g' An andysis of this result by Fermi, Teiler and Weisskopf showed that the
interaction of the negative cosmic ray mesons with nuclei was twelve orders of magnitude
weaker than that of the positive r n e ~ o n .Even
~
by modifLing the spin of the particle, as
Kemmer had suggested, the disagreement codd only be reduced to ten orders of
magnitude?

ii. The two-meson hmothesis (194n

Durhg the Shelter Island discussion of this problem in 1947, Robert Marshak
? ~ are two
proposed a solution, which he and Ham Bethe later elaborated in a ~ a ~ e rThere
different kinds of mesons which exia in nature, they said, possessing different masses: the
heavy meson is produced in the upper atmosphere and is responsible for nuclear forces, while
the light meson is a decay product of the heavy meson, and is observed at sea level where it
interacts weakly with matter?'

The first expetimental evidence which suggested the

existence of these two types of meson with dinerent mas came fiom Lattes, Occhialini, and

Powell, who had developed track identification to hi&

precision?

They published two

photographs, each showing a meson stopping in a photographie emulsion with a secondary

meson sg
-

at the same point

Poweil and his group named the two types of meson, x-mesons and p-mesons. The nmeson, later called the pion, was identified with the Yukawa meson, and is much heavier than
its decay producc the p-meson, Iater caiIed the muon. The pion couples strongly to nucleons,

and is produced copiously, while its daughter, the muon, interacts mainly electromagnetically,
giving it a small scattering cross-section, and therefore negligible absorption."

This resolved

the earlier difficulties. Three years later, in 1950, the neutrai a-meson (no)was discovered
confimiing the preciiction of Kemmer based upon charge independence?

A number of

experiments established the spin of both the charged and neutlal x-mesons to be zero, and in
1951, the parity was found to be negative."

After the discovery of the p-meson, it was found that both its decay and its absorption
codd be described by an interaction quite snilar to the one introduced by Fenni for P-decay.

In June 1947, Bruno Pontecorvo realized that the Conversi-Pancini-Piccioni results indicated
that the rate of negative meson capture was very similar to K-capture, allowing for the
dBerence in mass. He therefore suggested that there might be, "...a fiindamentai analogy
between &processes and processes of emission or absorption of charged rnes~ns."'~
The

following year, Puppi noted the decays of both

A-

and p-mesons had couphg constants of

similar rnagnit~de.'~' In addition, the similarty of the 0-decay coupling constant to p-decay

and p-capture was noted by Lee, Rosenbluth and Yang in 1949,

... it is remarkable that the three independent experiments: the B-decay of the nucIeons
and the p-mesons, and the interaction of the nucleons with the p-mesons lead to
coupling constants of the same order of
In addition, Lee, Rosenbluth, and Yang noted a merence in order of magnitude of processes
involving the p-meson, and processes invo1vng the n-meson,
..-if we assume the sc-mesons to have integral spin and assume direct couphgs for the
processes,
with coupling constants determined fiom the lifetime of r-mesons and the strength of
nucIear forces, the interactions between the nucleons can be quantitativel-y explained as
a second-order interaction through the vimial creation and annihilation of irmesons. 'O3

Even afier the distinction between the r and p had been cleared up, meson theory was
still in trouble. Meson field theory calculations could be trusted only to the frst nonvanishing order of perturbation theory, because when taken M e r , they ran into

infinitie~.'~
The numerous successes of quantum electrodynamics rely upon the fact that
multiple vimial photon effects shouid be small, and this is made possible by the fact that the

coupling constant a is smali, only 1/137. In Yukawa theory, however, the coupling constant

is large, and so higher order calculations diverge.'''

Consequently, meson theory rested on

insecure foundations. According to Fenni in 1952,

... one c m seldom manage to make a cdculation that is really right because the theory
is so complicated, and if one tries, more as a nile than an exception, one encounters
divergent infinite ternis which one usually attempts to eliminate by not perfectly
orthodox procedures. Perhaps at the root of the trouble is the fact that the theory
attempts to oversimplify a situation which may in fact be quite complicated. When the
Yukawa theory first was proposed there was a legitunate hope that the particles
involved, protons, neutrons, and n-mesons could be legitimately considered as
elementary particles. This hope loses more and more [ofl its foundation as new
elementary particles are king disc~vered.'~~

With the problems in meson field theory, theorists turned to oher methods, Their aim
was to try to make limited predictions concerning interactions of the new particles which did

not depend upon the magnitude of coupling constants. Sice isotopic spin had nothing to do
with perturbation theory, it could serve as a reliable guide. Back in the late thimes, Kemmer

had insisted that the consequences of isotopic spin invariance hold regardless of dynamical

approximations, but in hose days, calculations had been dominated by second-order

perturbation theory, and the generality of isotopic spin had not b e n realized In the fiffies,
however, isotopic spin began to nse in prominence.
In 1952, Fermi and collaborators published the results of their pion-nucleon scattering
experiments at the 450 MeV Chicago ~ynchrocyclotron.'~~
Fermi was intrigued that at the

highest pion energies (-140 MeV), the scattering appeared to proceed predominantly in the
isotopic spin H / 2 state. From the results of the experiment, the cross-sections for the three
processes,

?r++p-+r-+p
~-+~+lrO+n
n-+p+.rr-+p
stood in ratios close to 9:2:l. These numbers follow fiom isospin considerations alone as
long as 1=3/2 domina te^.'^' This is because since a a-meson has I=1, and a nucleon (N) has
1=1/2, a rrtN system has I=1/2 or 312 by combination of anguiar momentum- Since isospin is

conserved (dropping electromagnetic effects), any n+N s c a t t e ~ gamplitude A is a h e a r

combination of transitions 1/2+1/2 and 3/2+312-

iii. New wistable ~ ~ c I(1e94n

s

In December 1947, Rochester aud Butler published their paper, "Evidence for the
existence of new unstable particles".'"

Working in Blackettys Manchester laboratory, they

had discovered two unusuai events in a cloud chamberr one showed a forked track wiirch
they interpreted as the spontaneous decay of a neutrd particle into a pair of charged particIes,

and the other showed a track with a marked kink, m o a probably the decay of a charged
particle into another charged particle plus one or more neutrals. In both cases, the mass of
the parent part..de lay somewhere between 770 and 1600 me."' The Manchester V-particles,

as the particles were caiIed, did not attract much attention iriitially. Rochester later wrote that
the M O years following 1947 were embarrassing to the Manchester group because they did

not fmd any more V-particles, and other groups did not reexamine earlier cloud chamber
pictures right away, although they were making their own disc~veries.~"Leprince-Ringuet,
with his group at the cole Polytechnique, announced the discovery of very heavy mesons

which he calIed mnesons, with mass at Ieast 700 me?

Lafer that year, Powell and his

group at Bristol found a charged particle with mass between 870 and 985 me decaying into
three particles, al1 believed to be

These experiments were of high quality, but they

suffered fkom low statistics. They staaed to attract attention o d y afier Anderson's group at
Caltech published a papa in which they reported thirty-four cloud-chamber events: thirty

forks, and four kinks. They came to the same temarkable conclusion as had Rochester and
Butler, that, "... these two types of events represent, respectively, the spontaneous decay of
neutral and unstable particles of a new type.''114

The early m e s witnessed a rapid expansion of experimentai activities. The

proceedings of the Bagnres-de-Bigorre conference, held in JuIy 1953, contains contrbutons
fiom about twenty groups active in the field.'15 At Bagnres, it was agreed that vpartcles

corne in two different varieties: K-mesons, defined as particles with m a s intermediate

between the r-meson and the proton, and hyperons, defhed as particles with nass
intermediate between the neutron and de~teron."~Pais soon suggested the name baryon to
denote nucteons and hyperons collectively.'" By the end of 1953, the Cosmotron at

Brookhaven National Laboratory was providing pion beams that quickly confkmed the
presence of ~-~articles."' This marked the end of an era-data on K-mesons and hyperons
soon began to pour out of the accelerator laboratores at a rate with which the low cosmic ray
intensities could not compete.

iv. Pais and associated ~roduction(1 9521

The V-particles were puPling, in that they were produced copiously, but they decayed
relatively s l o ~ l ~ If
. ~the
' ~mechanism responsible for their production were responsible for
.

their decay, they would be expected to have lifetimes on the order of 10-" seconds, but their

lifetimes are greater than IO-'' seconds. The first step in the resolution of this problem was
taken by Abraham Pais, who decided to look for new selection d e s , which would hold for Vparticle formation, but not de~ay.'~~
His first step was to divide their interactions into two

distinct groups,
The fist group ... comprises the nucleon-r-meson interaction and certain others of
comparable strength. The second group comprises very weak interactions b e ~ e e n
these same particles. The order of magnitude of the couplings is indeed keminiscent of

those that were introduced by Yukawa to descnie 8-decay through the intermediary of
bos~ns.,.'~'

This is the first clear distinction that we have seen made between strong and weak
interactions. Pais Iooks for selection d e s which would hold for strong and electromagnetic
interactions, but not for weak processes, By weak processes, he means reactions simila. to
neutrino processes in which there is a very small coupling constant-

Pais proposed an "even-odd rule, which in its simples fom, can be stated as follows:
assign a number O to all "old particles (x,N,y,e,~)and a nurnber 1 to the new
V-particles.'"

In any process, add these numbers for initial-state particles, and then for final-

state particles, with the respective

sums being ni and nf Then, in ail strong and

electromagnetic processes, ni and nf m u t both be even or odd, but in weak decays of the new
particles, one mm shall be even, the other odd. Following these instructions,

s-+p4L0+lr0
is strongly forbidden, while
tP+~O+Q

is strongly allowed.'"

Thus, according to Pais' even-odd rule, the V-particles must be

produced in pairs. This mechanism came to be c d e d associated production, although Pais

himself does not know who coined the term.Iz4 The d e also rnakes a prediction: it
implies that the decays,

~'+p+nand

P+2n
proceed by weak interactions, although, "... such very weak couplings have so far only been
125

1rl2S
considered in neutrino processes, such as 13, p, a-decay--.

Early in 1953, at the Lorentz-Kamerlingh-Onnes Conference in Leiden, Pais gave a

paper in which he tried to denve his even-odd d e from a group theoretical fou~dation-'~~
Since isotopic spin was very much in vogue as a resdt of Fermi's work in Chicago, Pais
wanted to buiId isotopic spin into the foundations of the theory, and so at the outset, he

clearly defined its limitations,

... this invariance can only exist if we disregard electromagnetic phenornena For the
electromagnetic field is precisely the agent which enables us to distinguish between
protons and neutrons and between the three charge States of the a-mesons. It should
be added that in what foilows the proton-neutron and the charged-neutral a mass
differences are considered as secondary electromagnetic effects.'"
Pais wanted to group aIi the new particles into isotopic spin multiplets, and then relate the
isospin to a new quantum number, a-party, which is even or odd. Isosph is then to be

conserved in al1 strong interactions, while a-parity is to be conserved in strong and

electromagnetic interactions, but not weak interactions,

... classification in "event' (strong) and "odd" (weak) interactions just corresponds to a
distinction between those interactions which conserve a-parity, and those which do
not. Thus the present picture seems to involve a hierarchy of interaction
corresponding to the symmetry classes of the entopic variabled2'

Pais realimd that this attempt was not flly developed, and he only intended it as, "... a fist
stage aUning at a Mler comprehension of the various particles and field^."'^

v. Gell-Mann and strangeness (1 953 -56)

The next step in the reconciliation of strong production and weak decay was made in
August 1953 by Murray Gell-Mann with his paper in PhysicaI Review, "Isotopic spin and new

unstable partic~es".'~~
Gell-Mann starts off by giving a hierarchy of interactions,

126

... let us suppose that both "ordinary" particles (nucleons and pions) and "new unstable
particles" (V-particles) have interactions of three kinds:
Interactions that rigorously conserve isotopic spin, (We assume these to be
(i)
strong.)
Electromagnehc interactions, (Let us nclude mass m e r e n c e effects in this
(ii)
category.)
(iii) Other charge-dependent interactions, which we take to be very weakJ3'
Gell-Mann adds to this the ingenious proposai of assigning integer isospin to hyperons, and
half-integer isotopic spin to particl cl es.'^* Later that year, this same isotopic spin
assignment was dso suggested by Nakano and ~ i s h i j i m a 'Gell-Mann
~~
set the charged and

uncharged V-particles (,A,E-)in an isotopic spin triplet, and the r-mesons

anriparticles (Px-)
each in isotopic doublets.'"

(Kmand their

As usual, (p,n) are in an isotopic doublet

In the presence of only strong interactions, the Z particles are mass degenerate, as are the K
mesons. (Note that ail multiplets are slightly split, and this splitting is ataibuted to
electromagnetic effects.) Under this scheme, the possible decay,

does not conserve isotopic spin, and so it is forbidden- Therefore, A must decay by weak
interactions. Although every process allowed by Gell-Mann complies with associated

production, the converse, of course, is not tme. For example,

and
?r'+p-+c'+Kare forbidden by Gell-Mann, although,

n-+p+C-+X"

is allowed. in this paper, Gell-Mann stresses that the third component of isospin I, needs to

be conserved by strong and eIectromagnetic interactions, but that it can be violated in weak

interactions.
GeU-Mann had trouble getting the paper published.'35 The editors of Physical
Review objected to the K-mesons being placed in isotopic spin doublets (K+,A!) and (@&-).

They could not understand, at first, how a 1Y" couid be different i*m p. They did not like
the fact that Gell-Mann was requiring that a neutrd meson not be its own particle, but this

had already been done by Kemmer in 1938.1M When Gell-Mann Sonned the editors of
thiq they brought up another problem-they thought, initidy, that the Pauli exclusion

principle implied that fermions had to corne in isotopic doublets, like nucleons, and that

bosons had to be isotriplets, Iike a-mesons. Gell-Mannpointed out that this was not m e , and
they fmally relented, but they refiised to let him use the title he wanted, which was "Isotopic
spin and curious particles",

Physical Review rejected "curious particles". 1 tried "strange particles", and they
rejected that too. They insisted on "new unstabIe particles". That was the only phrase
suniciently pompous for the editors of the PhysicaZ ~eview."'
A month later, in September 1953, Gell-Mann circulated a preprinf "On the

classification of particles". lu

In this paper, Gell-Mann went into great detail descnbing

multiplet structure, and he discussed the newly discovered cascade particle, which decayed
into A+L, later understood to be,
y-+A+rGell-Mann suggested that to explain the cascade decay in two steps via A, weak non-leptonic
decays shodd obey the

de,
\Al3\=%

In addition, he predicted the 2 to accompany the Z- in an isotopic spin doublet After

taking to Serber and Lee at CoIumbia, Gell-Mann became concerned about the mass

difference between the charged V, particles (C',C-) and the uncharged V,' (A) being too great
for them to be an isotopic triplet, and so he decided to put A in a singlet lnstead, and
consequentiy, he predicted another new particle E0to complete the triplet, which he expected

to decay into A by y emis~ion."~

During this visit, Gell-Mann named his scheme strongeness. Under charge
independence, there is a definite relationship between the charge of a particle, and its third

for the nucleons, and Q I , for pions.

component of isotopic spin. For example,

Gell-Mann and Kazuhiko Nishijima both had the idea that this relationship could be extended
with a new quantity, which GelI-Mann called strangeness S, and Nishijima cded

?-charge.'"

This allows the charge to be written,

where B is the number of baryons, and S is the a quantum nimiber which is conerved in
strong and electromagnetic interactions. This is a codification of Gell-Mann's earlier work.

It works because under strong interactions, Q,I', and B are al1 conserved, so S is conserved as
~ e l l . ' ~Under
'
weak interactions, however, 1, is not conserve& in facf 1 M31=%, and
therefore S is not conserved either.
Detailed streamiined accounts of this scheme, including more consequences, were
given in 1955 by Nishijima and in 1956 by Gell-Mann. Weak interactions not only obey the
d e , 1 LU,( =%, but they also obey the even more restrictive d e ,

pq=%

dong with

pl=%
The assignments for S were: +1 for K yI?; O for p. n; -1 for A, C,

p,K-;and -2

for I. AU

in ail, the scheme predicted three new particies: the go,the 5,and the @ which was
required to be different from the K? Remarkably, al1 of these particles were discovered

within the next few years in bubble chambers exposed to accelerat~rs.'~~

As experiment
produced more and more new partcles throughout the 1 9 5 0 ~
strangeness
~
proved to be a

f a i W guide. In fac& even after additional quantum numbers were added, it continued to be
useful, and remains so even to this day.

vi. The neutral kaon svstem

At the Glasgow conference of 1954, Fermi had raised the question, if

P (S=-

(-1)

and

1) are non-identical particles, how can they be distinguished in the laboratory? These

two particles differ only in their strangeness, and they both decay through the weak
interaction, which does not conserve strangeness! Gell-Mann and Pais published a paper in
1955 in which they offered a concept of p a r t i ~ l e - ~ e .Consider
' ~ ~ the decay,

KO+7r++rwith amplitude A. Under charge conjugation, the final state goes into itself. Note that since

I(O has zero spin, the two .n-mesons have zero angular momentum so that the state is
unchanged when 7r'P.n-. The charge conjugate of the process,
*+u-+T+

also has amplitude A, (up to a phase which we are fiee to choose to be +1).

Observe that the

fmal state is the same in both processes, but the Initial state is not- It has S+I

in the frst

process, but S=- 1 in the second- How can the operation C transform the final state into itseIf,
but not the initiai state into itseif! It cannot, as long as S is conserved, which it is for the

strong interactions, but it can, and does, when S is not conserved, as in the weak interactions.

In fact, weak interactions, acting twice, can mix

K" and '?i via the processes,

ES~+-W&J
Gell-Mann and Pais suggested the novel idea of introducing the combinations of one-partide
states,

Accordig to this combination, the state K,c m decay hto rr'+n- (with amplitude ~ h / 2 )but
,

& cannot decay at al1 that way (amphde zero). More generally, K,c m oniy decay into
even states under C, and

K -can o d y decay into odd states. These two states will therefore

have different lifetimes!

... our picture of the [e-meson] implies that it is a particle mixture exhibiting two
distinct lifetimes, that each lZetime is associated with a different set of decay modes,
and that not more fhmt halfof aZZ [p-mesons] c m undergo the familiar decay into two
pions. lu
Gell-Mann and Pais redized at once that K2should live much longer than K,,because the
rates of decay into a
'
*
-

and 21r0(both inaccessible to

Kd are rnuch larger than the rates for

alternative decays. The fxst evidence for such a long-lived neutral K-particle was obtained
two years later, in 1956, at the Brookhaven ~osrnotron.'~'

vii. Dditz and the 7-0 puzzle (1954-5@

The year 1956 marked a crisis in particle physics centred on the properties of the
mesons. Recall that at the Bagnres conference of 1953, the name K-mesons was given to

particles with mass intermediate between the r-meson, and the proton. At the rime, this
designation icluded two mesons, the r and the 8, which decayed by different modes,
9+?r+lr

7+rr+rrt?r

During the conference, Richard Dalitz presented his anaiysis of the r that was designed to

detennine its spin and parity through its decay into three pions."6 The three individuai
pions produced in i meson decay do not emerge with a unique energy, as is characteristic of
a three-body decay, and so Dalitz presented a convenient way of mapping possible energy
ranges in a finite two-dimensional region such that each point on the graph uniquely marked
the energy configuration of the pions.'47 From his anaiysis, Dalitz concluded that the r has

zero spin and even parity.

This raised a paradox which becarne known as the 7-9 p d e . It had already been

determined that the parity of a r-meson is odd. Neglectng, for the moment, the effects due
tu the relative motion of the n-mesons, if parity is to be conserved under decay, the B

have the product parity of two T-mesons, which is even. Similarly, the

must

must have the total

parity of three T-mesons, which is odd- Including the relative motion of the r-mesons,

however, does matter, and so to make the argument conclusive and dennitive, it was
necessary to study experimentally the momentum and anguiar distribution of the umesons."'

As more and more experimental evidence was a c c d a t e d , it indicated

that

and O do not have the same parity, and therefore are not the same particle- At the same

time, however, there were stmng indications that the

and B were the same particle: theu

masses were almost identical, and their l i f e h e s were just as indistinguishable. Since a
particle cannot have a party which is now even, and then odd, there initially appeared to be
three

options. The first two were straightforwad First, perhaps the r and 0 are two distinct

particles rather than alternative decay modes of one particle, although they have nearly
identical properties. Second, perhaps the spin was not zero. For example, spin 2, with even

parity, would permt both 27r- and 3wdecay. This option, however, was contradicted by the
DaIitz plot which became increasingly convincing as more evidence was gathered. These two

ways out, which were abandoned shortly afienvard, represented attempts to save the situation
by conventional means. The third option was radical. Maybe there are not MO particles at
dl, but only one. Maybe parity is not conserved in the decay! Perhaps there is only a single

K-meson with spin zero, and both the 2.n- and 37r- decays are alternative modes of decay of
the same particle.149

viii. P- and C-violation (1957)

Pursuhg this clue, Tsung Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang searched the fiterature, and
they found that parity conservation had never been tested in weak interaction^,'^^

... existing experiments do indicate par@

conservation in strong and electromagnetic

interactions to a high degree of accuracy, but for the weak interactions (that is, decay
interactions for the mesons and hyperons, and various Fermi interactions) parity
conservation is so far only an extrapolated hypothesis unnipported by experixnental
evidence.

'"

Thus, Lee and Yang drew attention to a whole class of phenornena, instead o f just an exciting

but rather isolated puzzle- Further, they proposed possible experhentai tests of parity
conservation in 0-decay, and in meson and hyperon decay. To test the possible violation of
parity, they concluded that since panty reverses momenta and positions, but not anguiar

momentum (or spins), it is necessary to meanire a dependence of a decay rate (or crosssection) on a tem that changes sign under the parity operation.

In January 1957, a series of three brilliant experiments appeared in Physic~IReview,

showing that P- and C-are violated in 8-decay, p-decay, and udecay. The frst expriment,
performed by Chein-Shiung Wu et al. demonstrated the asymmetry of electron emission fiom

aligned nuclei. IR Afier carefuliy aligning the spins of radioactive cobalt-60 nuclei with a
magnetic field, the direction of emission of 6-decay electrons was monitored, and it was

found that most of the electrons came out in the direction of the nuclear spin. That's all there

is to it, but this simple observation implies parity violation: under space-reversai, the

direction of nuclear spin reverses, but the direction of electron emission does not. Word of
this astonishing resdt spread rapidly even before the resuits appeared in print, and

consequently, two other experiments for publication in the same journal.'"

Garwin,

Lederman and Weinrich, and independently, Friedman and Telegdi demonstrated parity

violation and charge conjugation violation in the decay

~++p++e+

Rather than beginning with a polarized beam, these experiments exploited Lee and Yang's
prediction that muons should be polarkd dong the line of fiight in the decay,
r++/4++v

and in,

pC+e++2v
as they occur in the chah"'

Thus, by the spring of 1957, it had ken well-established that

P and C are violated in weak proceses wherever one looked. Moreover, the effects were
large.

Even before the experimental evidence had shown that P and C are violated, however,
another question had been posed by Lee and Yang, and by Lev Landau.'"

Assuming that

these ~ r symmeeies
o
are violated individually, is the combination of the two conserved?

We assume that in weak interactions these two invariance propeaies do not hold
separately. But we c m suppose that we still have invariance with respect to the
product of the two operations, which we c d combined inversion. Combined inversion
consists of space reflection with interchange of particles and antiparti~les.'~
This idea lasted until 1964, when the K-system also showed CP-violati~n.~~'
Theorists had
to

fall back M e r upon CPT conservation. Although each of C,P, and T, have a l l been

individually violated, the combination CPT has held up under scrutiny, which is a relief, since

any violation of it wodd require the revision of general principles of quantum field
theory. ISg

ix. The Y-A theorv of the weak interactions (1958)

Immediately afta parity-violation was discovered, Abdus Salam realized that it could
be exploited to explain the vanishing of neutrino mass.'" His argument runs as follows,

... the fiee neutrino Lagrangian is invariant for the substitution,

If it is M e r postulated that neutrino interactions produce no self-mass, one way to
secure this is to require that the total Lagrangian also remah invariant for the same

substitution, so that,

vv~"--~"k
while other fields ... remain un~hanged.'~'
Note the presence of the y, matrix, often referred to as the chiraiity operator, which can be
chosen as being diagonal with eigenvalues I l .'" Similar conclusions were reached by Lee
and ~ang.'" Under the parity operation, spin acts like an &al

vector, and so the

correlation of spin with 8-decay electron emission, as experimentally observed, can be

understood o d y in tems of parity violation. Lee and Yang explain how this affects the
neutrino,

... we wish to examine here a possible theory of the neutrino different n o m the
conventionally accepted one. In this theory, for a given momentum p the neutrino has
only one spin state, the spin being always pardel top. The spin and momentum of
the neutrino together therefore automatically define the sense of the screw. In this
theory, the mass of the neutrino must be zero, and its wave-fiinction need only have
two cornponents instead of the usud four.'@
This No-component theory of the neutrino is equivdent to the two-component theory of the
neutrino postulated by Weyl in 1929, which back in 1933, was heavily criticized by Pauli

precisely because of the pari@ violation it entailed!I6'

This revitalized treatment of the neutrino led to a rapid clarification of the couplings of

the weak interactions. In his original theory of 1933, Fenni treated @-decayas the
transformation of a neutron into a proton, dong with the emission of an electron-neutrino
pair, which leaves the spin of the proton unchanged. In addition, the anguiar-momennimand

parity are unchanged. In 1936, Gamow and Teller had shown, by introducing spins of the

heavy particles into the Hamiltonian, that not al1 8-decays occur between nuclear States with
identical angular momenta, M=O,and so they introduced a generazation which could

fom the mathematics of

accornmodate changes in anguia. momentum, ~ = 1 . ' Strktly
~ ~
angular momentum, U = O transitions (Fermi transitions) correspond to scaIar or vector

couplings, while Pi=l transitions (Gamow-Teller transitions) correspond to axial-vector and

tensor coupluigs. '"

The near equdity of the effective couphg constants in the processes of P-decay,

p-

decay, and p-capture led to the postulation of a universal Fenni interaction in 1949.'"

These interactions can all be treated as interaction between the pairs of spinor fields np, pv,
ev.IS9 In 1950, Louis Michel studied the most general coupling between four fermions

which involved the five different kinds of coupling possible: scalar, pseudoscalar, vector,

axial-vector, and ten~or."~He found that the aii five different coupling constants may be
lumped together into a single dimensionless constant p, ever since known as the Michel
para~neter.'~' Following Michel, in 1953, Konopinski and Mahmoud noted an ambiguity in

the value of p in connection with p-decay, behween the possible processes,

p-+e-+2v
p-+e-tz+"

It tumed out that o d y the second process is possible. They had the idea to look for a
principle which wouid tel1 them which decays were possible, and this led to the principle of
conservution of lepton number. Ascnbe by convention, a lepton number +1 to e-, p-, v; -1

for e+,

and 7;and O for ail other particles.'*

Under these conventions, lepton nurnber is

conserved in all reactiondn

Armed with the conservation of lepton number and the known violation of p-,
Sudarshan and Marshak were able to determine the correct coupling of the weak interactions

in 1957. From the experimentai measurement of weli-established transitions with different f

such as,

they codd infer that there m u t be at least one type of S or V , and at least one of T and
A.'"

The combinations ST and VA both have the added merit that the neutrino is always

emitted with the same chirdity in both Fermi and Gamow-Teller transitions.'"

Anaiysis of

pion and kaon decay indicated that there is a dominant A interaction, and furthemore,
measurement of the angle between the electron and neutrino directions pointed towards the VA
coupiing, making it the best candidate. Sudarshan and Marshak concludeci,
Whiie it is ciear that a mixture of vector and axial vector is the oniy universai fourfennion int=raction which is possible and possesses many elegant features, it appears
that one published and several unpubfished results cannot be reconciled with this
hypothesis.'76

It tumed out that there was a problem with the ~e~ experimenf but it was soon resolved, and
in January of 1958, Sudarshan and Marshak published their definitive paper.

'"

Even before the experimentai issue had been settled, in September 1957, Feynman and
Gell-Mann proposed their own V-A theory on theoretical grounds of simplicity. They were
very impressed by the two-component neutrino, and they took it is a bais for intmducing
parity violation into weak decays for fermions as weil."'

They introduced two-component

spinors for dl spin-% particles, by restricting fermion fields to the form,

This is equivalent to letting Nature pick out only one of the two chiral spinors, because the
function x has only two c~mponents.'~~
As for the conjugate wave-fiuiction, since,

Using these representations, Feynman and Gell-Mann were able to take advantage of the
attractive feature,
(1-ys) ( l + y 5 )-0

(28)

and so the o d y bilinear form constnicted out of two dinerent spinors tunis out to be,

J P - F ~ Y( ~I + Y , )WEY,(1%) #,+Ky, (l+r,IgW

(29)

and the four-fermioninteraction is of the form,

( 1 4 ~lb21
~)
CV3y, (I+Y~)
JI*] +h-C -

(3 0)
This is similar to the expression proposed by Sudarshan and Marshak (1957), and also by Jun
IVLY,

John Sakurai (1958).'"

Except for the (l+y,) terms, the weak current proposed by Feynman and Gell-Mann
looks just like the electromagnetic cunent, and indeed, this is the analogy that they set out to
exploit. They split the current into two,

a vector current, and an axial current,

JC-VY,Y&

J:=vY,#
Feynman and Gell-Mann proposed that the weak current is conserved just like the
f

electromagnetic current (another vector quantity). This came to be known as the conserved
vector curent (CVC) hypothesis, and it explained why the universality of the strengths of 6-

and p-decays appear to be the same Although the weak axial vector current is not exact&
conserved, it is almost. Two years later, Gell-Mann and L e proposed the partiaily
conserved axial current (PCAC) hypothesis, which became an important adjunct to the

current-algebra approach in the construction of phenomenological applications for processes

involving pions.18'

x. Resonances and the ~articleexdosion

Following the experiments of Fermi and his Chicago group in 1952, M e r
experimentation with pion-nucleon scattering showed that the cross-section of ir+N scattering

peaks strongIy around 180 MeV, where the scattering is nearly pare I=3/2, &er which it
d r o p ~ . 'This
~ is a sure sign of the failme of perturbation theory, which cannot accomt for

such peaks.'" The Chicago group had noted that the distribution should be isotropie or
behave as 1+3cos% if an angular momentum &l/2 or 312 state dominates. Experiment

showed that the -312

state domhates, and at the centre-of-mass energy of 1232 MeV, there

is a sharp peak in the cross-section, where the pion and nucleon join to form a short fived
resonance state. This was the first resonance discovered, and it came to be known as the 3-3

resonance, although it is now known as A(1232).

As higher pion energies became available at the Brookhaven Cosmotron, more and

more resonances were found. The full importance and the widespread nature of resonances,
however, only became clear in 1960 when Luis Alvarez and his team began their work with
separated R bearns in hydrogen bubble chambers exposed to the ~evatron.'" The first

resonance observed was the I=1 peak of A+r scattering, which became known as the
C(1 38S).lg5

The following year, in 1961, three meson resonances, the p, a, and 7,were

discovered in rapid succession, and many others were soon to follow.lU It took a few years
before physicists became cornfortable with the idea that thqe is no real Merence between a

resonance and an UIlSfabIe particle, but even before they did, theorists Wre Gell-Mann and
Ne'eman were ready to embrace the newly discovered states with clever systems of
cla~sification,'~~

4. Concluding remarks

Pauli proposed the neutrino as a smultaneous solution to the problems of both the

continuous 0-ray spectnim, and the spin-statistcs of nuclei. Fermi then incorporated the
neutrino hypothesis, and the p-spin associated with Heisenberg's exchange symmetry, into his
theory of B-decay. This was a quantum field theory, and although it gave good results for 8decay, as intended, it could not explain the intense attraction between the neutron and proton.

Combining the ideas of Heisenberg and Fermi, Yukawa poshilated a new particle which could
explain both p-decay and exchange symmetry through its interaction with both heavy and
Iight particles.
M e r charge independence was proven, a cosmic ray partide was found which
appeared to have the characteristics required of Yukawa's meson. Meson field theory was
appealing, and Kemmer postulated that the meson codd be a vector field, instead of a scalar.

The meson did not behave as expected in the lab, however, and in 1947, it was determined
that there were actudly two mesons, the n and the p, with decay coupling constants of smilar
magnitude. Meson field theory struggled, however, and isotopic spin served as a guide for

experiment.
Unstable V-cles

were found in cosmic rays in 1947. They showed an odd

combination of properties as they were produced in abundance, but they decayed rehtively

slowly. Pais dserentiated between strong interactions, responsible for KparticIe formation,
and weak interactions responsible for thek decay. He suggested a new selection rule, the
even-odd d e , which came to be known as associated production. Gell-Mann (and Nishijima)

generalized the d e to a conservation Law of strangeness which was obeyed by the strong and
electromagnetk interactions, but was violated by the weak interactions. The T-8 puzzle
resulted in violation of both parity and charge conjugation invariance, which in tum led to a

clarification of the weak interactions, Soon, accelerators used in conjmction with bubble

chambers were the source of many new particfes. Theoretical physics was ready for the rise
of group theory.

1. Bohr (1932), p - 349. Rutherford proposed the nuclear mode1 of

the atom in 1911- Using the experimental results of Geiger and
Marsden, who had scattered a-particles from gold atoms in a t h i n
f oil, Rutherford conchded that the force between the nucleus (a
term adopted in 1912) and the a-particle was the same as the force
between two point charges, provided the separation of the two was
greater than IO-* cm. See Brink (1965), Chapter 1.

2.
"It is generally supposed t h a t the nucleus of a heavy elernent
consists mainly of ar-particles with an admixture of a few free
protons and electrons, but the exact division between these
constituents is unknown." [Rutherford (19321, p. 737.1
3.
This was first pointed out by Heitler and Rerzberg (1929).
has a problem with
Shortly thereafter, it was also noticed that
its statistics4.

Ehrenfest and Oppenheimer (1931).

6This was not the first time that Bohr had doubted the
conservation of energy. In 1 9 2 4 , together with Kramers and Slater,
Bohr had postulated that energy conservation shouid only hold
statistically in quantum transitions. [Bohr, Kramers, and Slater
(1924)1 Early in 1925, however, Compton and Simon performed an
experiment in which in which they scattered X-rays from electrons
within a cloud chamber, and their results showed t h a t energy and
momentum conservation do hold true in individual events . [Compton
and Simon (1925)1 The following year, Dirac showed t h a t his
theory
of
relativistic
quantum mechanics
implies
strict
conservation of energy and momentum, and doubts about energy
conservation disappeared, until resurfacing again in the context of
B-decay.
In November 1 9 2 9 , however, Oskar Klein derived an
apparently disquieting consequence of the Dirac equation: a slow
electron can pass through a steep potential wall higher than 2 mc'
and emerge with a negative energy. Although this result, known as
the Klein paradox, was to become harmless in the positron theory,
Bohr was impressed with it, and he wrote to Dirac, asking whether
he thought that, .
t h e difficulties i n relativistic quantum
mechanics might perhaps be connected with the apparently
fundamental difficulties as regards conservation of energy in P-ray
disintegrations and the interior of stars-" Dirac replied that he
preferred to keep rigorous conservation of energy at al1
costs, [Pais (1986), pp. 312-131

8.

Pauli ( 1 9 6 4 ) , Volume II, p. 1316-17.

9. Pais (1986), p - 317, The next day, 17 June 1931, t h e news made
t h e New Y o r k Times, "A new inhabitant 015 the heart of the atom wa
introduced t o the world of physics today when Dr- W - P a u l i of the
I n s t i t u t e of Technology i n Z i i r i c h , witzerland, postulated the

existence of particles or entities which he christened ' neutronsr.

10

Quoted in Pais (1986), p - 317.

11. Fermi (1962), Volume 1, p 538 The 1talian name neutrone

means a large neutral object . In 1920. Rutherford had suggested
the possibility of a proton and an electron in close combination,
and t h i s had corne to be refexred to as t h e neutron.
To
differentiate between Rutherford's idea and Pauli's particle, Fermi
jokingly suggested t h e diminutive neutrino, meaning a small neutral
ob ject .
12.

Brink (1965), p. 10,

13 -

Chadwick (1932b), p. 692

14.

Chadwick (1932b), p. 697-

15.

Chadwick (1932b). p. 708.

17-

Heisenberg (1932a), p . Il.

18.

Heisenberg (l932a), p. 12.

See

a l s o Pais (1986), pp. 397-402.

Heisenberg (1932a), p. 12.

Right after this quotation,
Heisenberg gave a reference to Bohr's Faraday lecture-

1 9 - Heisenberg neglects al1 relativistic effects such as t h e spin-

o r b i t interaction.
20.
There are three other terms in the Hamiltonian:
the
attractive energy between neutrons, the Coulomb repulsion between
protons, and the mass-defects of t h e neutrons-

21. Our modern convention is reversed- We take isospin

for a proton, and -1 for a neutron.
22.

t o be +i

B r i n k (1965), p . 18.

23. Heisenberg's invariance does not hold under t h e substitution

of an individual proton for a neutron, but only for an interchange
of al1 protons and neutrons. For example, there exists a bound
state of t h e proton and the neutron, the deuteron, but there i s no
bound state of two protons or two neutrons alone. In fact, such a
st a t e would be incompatible with the Pauli exclusion principle,
since a proton and a neutron cari be in the same quantum state, but
two neutrons or two protons alone cannot.

24.

Heisenberg (1932a), p. 6 .

25 .

Bethe and Bacher (1936), p - 101-

26. In his third paper on nuclear structure, Heisenberg attempted

to find an approximate solution of the equations of motion in the
nucleus, but he ran into difficulties. His exchange interaction
did not produce saturation, and so he was forced to assume that the
nuclear particles became strongly repulsive if they approached each
other more closely than a certain c r i t i c a l distance. [Heisenberg
(1933)3 Shortly afterwards, Ettore Majorana (1933) showed that the
repulsive core was unnecessary and that exchange forces, of charge
only, and not spin, could produce saturation. This explanation
seemed satisfying for quite a while. It was only in 1951 when
early high energy experiments showed that Heisenberg s original
idea might be correct! [Brink (19651, p . 82.1
27.
In the meantirne, Ellis and Mott (1933) had made a discovery
about the P-ray spectrum. For a B-decay between a nucleus P and a
nucleus Q , they made the assumption that. " - . . the energy
difference E,-E, is equal to t h e upper l i m i t of the B-ray spectrum,
that is, to the maximum energy with which a P-ray can be
expelled. [Ellis and Mott (1933), p. 5021
This showed a way in
which the neutrino hypothesis could Save conservation of energy:
it could carry away the energy difference between the upper limit,
and what w a s actually observed.
2 8 - Fermi was not the first ta make an analogy with the creation
and annihilation of photons.
This had been done already by
Iwanenko in 1932,
"The expulsion of an 8- [decay] electron [in
beta-decay] is similar to the birth of a new particle." [Iwanenko
Fermi, however, was the first to put this idea
(1932). p - 4401
into operational form ,

29 30

Fermi (1962), Volume 1. p -

540

See Fermi (1934a, 1934b).

31.
At this stage. Fermi is calling the emitted particle a
neutrino. The theory of antimatter was still up in the air, and
Fermi w a s still using Dirac's hole theory. In J u l y of 1934, Wolfe
and Uhlenbeck gave the following notation for P-decay,
NiP+e'+n

where N is the neutron and n is the neutrino.[Wolfe and Uhlenbeck

(1934), p. 236-1
32.

Fermi (1934a). p . 2.

34. Apparently, Fermi had some difficulty with the Dirac-JordanKlein method of second quantization of fields, at first, but he
eventually mastered the technique, and put it to good use,[Fermi
(1962), Volume 1, p. 5391
35.
Fermi uses Q* for the transpose conjugate- Today, we would
mite this instead as Q t c
36.

Fermi (1934a), p. 6 ,

37.
Fermi (1934a), p - 7. It was later shown by Wigner that the
possible relativistically invariant interactions bilinear in the
electron and neutrino wave functions (and not containing the
gradients of these functions) are not restricted to vector
transformations. There are five types : calar, pseudoscalar,
vector, axial vector, and tensor, plus linear combination of these
ive types. We shall discuss this in more detail later.

38.

Fermi uses 6 instead of y, and he uses the matrix,

39. Note that Fermi takes t h e neutrino mass t o be zero- Fermi

tries different values for the neutrino mass, but zero mass give
the best agreement with experiment. [Fermi (1934a), p. 13 - 1
40. They are not strictly forbidden, as Fermi recognized, they are
only suppressed. This is because various assumptions made in t h e
calculations are not rigorous, for instance, the electron wavefunction may Vary over the nuclear volume, and neglected terms of
the order v/c may become important when &=O41. Bohr (1936), p . 26. " . . . the grounds for serious doubts as to
regards the strict validity of the conservation laws in the problem
of t h e emission of @-rays from atornic nuclei are now largely
removed by the increasing experimental evidence regarding B-ray
phenornena and the consequences of the neutrino hypothesis of Pauli
so remarkbly developed in Fermi' s theory - ''

44. Yukawa (1935), p - 4 8 .

Although Yukawa does not state it explicitly, he is using the

45.
raising and lowering operators. T ~ = T ~ c T The
~ lowering operator r,
transfoms a neutron into a proton. and the raising o p e r a t o r Ttransforms a proton into a neutron.

46 -

Y u k a w a (l93S), p.

47-

Y u k a w a (19351, pp. 53-54.

48.

Y u k a w a is, of course, adhering to Dirac's

49.

Y u k a w a (1935), p.

51-

Yukawa (19351, p. 57.

50

h d e theory.

54.

52. nive, Heydenburg, andHaftstad (19361, p . 806. They found t h a t

the proton-proton force acts at a distance less than 5x10-" cm.
53-

Breit, Condon, and Present (19361, p. 8 4 5 -

54Note that there was not yet any direct experirnental evidence
of neutron-neutron scattering.

55 -

Breit, Condon, and Present (1936), p. 826.

56.
Cassen and Condon note that this formalism w a s also used by
Fermi, and by Konopinski and Uhlenbeck (1935 .
57,

Cassen and Condon (1936), p - 8 4 6 -

Cassen and Condon switched the 21 convention f r o m Heisenberg's

58
theory. Their convention is s t i l l in use today.
59.

Cassen and Condon (1936), p . 846.

60.
These types of exchange interactions are discussed in the
review article by Bethe and Bacher (19361 .

61.

Wigner (193-71,p . 106.

62,

Wigner (L937), p. 107-

63 . Wigaer does not use our modern notation SU(2) and 0 (3) , but he
does refer explicitly t o the two-dimensional u n i t a r y group (while
restricting himself to unimodular transformations), and to the
three-dimensional r o t a t i o n group-

64. Wigner does not use t h i s exact fonnalisrn T, t o denote the

component of isotopic spin taken along a chosen axis, but w e add it
for clarity.

6 5 - This is a very simple example are not s t a b l e nuclei-

Obviously, t h e s e three states

6 6 - Isobaric nuclei have the same atomic mass number A, although

t h e y can have differing numbers of protons 2.

68. N e d d e r m e y e r and Anderson (1937), p. 34. L a t e r that year, in

October, the s a m e conclusion was reached independently by Street
and Stevenson at Hanrard6 9 - Neddermeyer and Anderson (19371, p . 3 4 .
70.
Five days later, a similar l e t t e r w a s sent from Geneva, by
Ernest Stckelberg, and in July, Yukawa published a paper pointing
out the same connection as well. CPais (1986), p. 4331
71.

Oppenheimer and Serber (1937 , p - 1113 .

7 2 - Note, however, t h a t although Yukawa's porper appeared in a

Japanese journal, the journal was in English.

73 . Kemmer pointed out that Yukawa' s particle could not explain

t h e relative positions of the ' S and 3~ states.
Independently,
Serber (1937) also criticized the spin-dependence of the forces.
74-

Kemmer (1938a), p - 117Bhabha (1938), p. 118,

Bhabha thinks that, with a neutral Ual1 known-particles w o u l d fa11 into three groups w i t h
masses of the order 4, Mu, and me, with positive, neutral, and
negative particles in each group75.

particle,

76.

Kemmer (1937)

77. Kemmer (19371, p . 908. Kemmer says that he got this idea for
the exchange of electron-positron and neutrino-antineutrino pairs
from his teachex, Gregor Wentzel, but that initially, Wentzel did
not think this would lead to charge independence. [Kemmer (1982), p

376.1
78.
Decay of the negatively charged Yukawa particle into an
electron plus neutrino could be inferred from Y u k a w a ' s o r i g i n a l
paper. T h e first to mention that Yukawa's mechanism would lead to
the decay of the positive Y u k a w a p a r t i c l e t o a positron p l u s a
neutrino w a s Bhabha (1938)79. Y u k a w a described his U-field by a one-component complex field
which was supposed to be the f o u r t h component of a vector field, i n
analogy to the electrodynamic scalar potential.
This is not
completely identical to a Pauli-Weisskopf (1934) scalar, which a l s o

implies a particle of zero spin, but has a sign d i f f e r e n c e i n the

spin eigenvalue. [Kemmer (1938b), p - 1281
80,

Kemmer (1938b) -

81,

Kemmer (1938b), p. 127

8 2 , A scalar meson couples to nucleons in such a way that a

nucleon can emit or absorb a meson in an S-state (orbital angular
momentum 1=0). Since the parity of the S-state is positive, t h e
meson must also have positive parity if the meson-nucleon
interaction is to be conserve parity- If instead, a meson coupled
to a P-state (1=I), it would need negative parity. This type of
particle is a peudoscalar meson, The pseudoscalar meson field,
unlike the scalar meson field, is not spherically symmetrical- Its
orientation in space is determined by the spin of the nucleon, and
so the interaction between two nucleons depends on the relative
orientation of their meson fields, making it spin-dependentA vector meson emitted or absorbed by a nucleon is in a Pstate, but there are two independent form of coupling. Both the
orbital and spin angular momentum of the meson can couple together,
resulting in an angular momentum of either zero or one, and this
can then couple with the nucleon spin tu give a total angular
momentum g. In other words, a v e c t o r can have a longitudinal or a
transverse polarization, and each of the possibilities has its own
coupling constant. The longitudinal state does not couple to the
nuclear spin, and is thus spin-independent, while the transverse
state does couple to the spin- [Brink (19651, pp- 95-96]
83.
84

Kemmer (1938~)
.
Kemmer (1938~)
, p. 355.

85.
The vector case corresponds to work of Proca (1936), and the
scalar case to the work of Pauli and Weisskopf (1934).

86. Bethe, himself, preferred a neutral theory based on a single

neutral particle, rather than an i s o t o p i c triplet. [Kemmer, p. 3801
87. P a i s (1986), p. 430. Someone raised the point that the French
might be concerned that meson be confused with maison.
88.

Williams and Roberts (1940).

89.

The neutrino, of course, went unobserved.

90.

Cahn and Goldhaber (19891, p. 1 8 -

91

Conversi, Pancini, and Piccioni (1946), p. 210.

92.

Fermi, Teller and Weisskopf (1947).

93 . There were other experimental difficulties as well , Theory

demanded a lifetime two order of magnitude shortew than observed,
and mesons scattered from nucleons a l s o about two orders of
magnitude fess than expected. [Pais (1986), pp. 452-531

94. The sarne suggestion had been made e a r l i e r by Tanikawa in 1 9 4 2 ,

and by Sakata and Inoue in 1943, although their publication was
delayed due to the war.
The suggestions differe.d in spin
assignments, which were open at the tirne. but Sakata and Inoue made
the correct guess [Pais (1986), p. 4531

95 .

Marshak and Bethe (1947), p. 506.

96.

Lattes, Occhialini, and Powell (1947).

97,
In 1941, Christian M d l e r invented the collective name nucleon
for the proton and nucleon [Pais (1986), p. 4501

98.

Steinbergew, Panofsky, and Steller (1950).

99.

Cahn and Goldhaber (1989), pp. 22-28.

100.

Pontecorvo (1947),p . 246,

Puppi (1948)-

102 . Independently , Oskar Klein (1948) noticed the similarity of

the P-decay constant to that for p-decay, and Tiomno and Wheeler
(1949) noticed its similarity to that of p-capture.
103-

Lee, Rosenbluth, and Yang (1949), p. 905.

104 -

Kernmer (1982), p - 380.

105. Back in 1938, Gian-Carlo Wick explicitly calculated the range

of Yukawa's particle using the uncertainty principle. Using Wick's
method, it was shown that a two meson exchange would have half the
range, and although it was hoped that the perturbation series would
converge. it did not converge quickly enough. CWick (1938 1

6
Fermi (1952), pp. 933-34. F e r m i , together with Yang in 1949,
had questioned whether n-mesons were elementary particles. They
suggested that these particles m i g h t instead be composites formed
by the*association of a nucleon with an anti-nucleon. [Fermi and
Yang (1949)l We shall mention this iater.
107,

Anderson, Fermi, Long, and Nagle ( 1 9 5 2 )-

108,
Pais (1986), p. 485-6.
Analyzing reaction by isospin
methods was a program initiated by Watson and Brueckner in 1951109.

Rochester and Butler (1947).

110. The mass range was very wide, not only because the identity
of the decay products was unknown, but because the masses of the
pion and muon, both likely candidates, were not at al1 wellestablished.
Remember that it was only a few months after the
discovery of n - p decay111.

Rochester (1989), p - 63.

112. Leprince-Ringuet et al. ( 1 9 4 8 ) . See also Leprince-Ringuet

(1949), which explains h o w a single event with mass 990 me was
found in 1944.
113.

R. Brown et al. (1949).

1 1 5 - The proceedings are unpublished, but Rochester (1989) gives

a good discussion.

116- This definition was intended to be revised if fundamental

particles heavier t h a n the deuteron were found. [Pais (19861,
p - 514.1

117.

Pais (1986), p. 514-

118,

Cahn and Goldhaber (1989), p - 58.

119. The same combination of properties (copious production, slow

decay) could be s a i d for the x-meson as well, but their decays
produce neutrinos, and people were used to the idea that neutrino
interactions are weak, What was new with the V-particies was a
purely hadronic decay whose rate was characteristic of neutrinotype processes - [Griffiths, (1987), p. 491
120. In this paper, Pais acknowledges that, I r . . . the present work
also contains many elements t h a t already appear i n an extensive
survey of V-particle models and that have recently been published
in the Progress of Theoretical Physics-"[Pais (1952), p. 6641 The
authors concerned are Nambu, Aizu and Kinoshita, Miyazawa, and
Oneda, al1 of who published i n 1951.

122.
Note that following a suggestion of Oppenheimer made at a
Rochester conference, Pais generalizes t h e rule of conservation of
the number of nucleons ta include the heavier V - p a r t i c l e s -

123- At t h e time, Pais wrote A' as

124-

Pais (19861, p. 518.

vL0,and

KO as

V.O.

The paper, and subsequent discussion, appear i n Pais (19531 .

P a i s (19531, p. 871-

Pais (1953) , p. 885.

Pais (l953), p. 887.

Gell-Mann (1953).
Gell-Mann (1953), p . 8.33 -

The cascade p a r t i c l e E was not y e t identifiedNakano and Nishij ima (1953)

Here, w e show t h e modern n o t a t i o n i n p a r e n t h e s e s .

w a s s t i l l using t h e V - p a r t i c l e n o t a t i o n .

136-

Gell-Mann

Kemmer ( 1 9 3 8 ~ ) .

137. Gell-Mann (1982), p. 400, H e adds, "... 1 have always h a t e d

the Physical Review L e t t e r s , and almost twenty years ago 1 decided
never again t o p u b l i s h i n that j o u r n a l , but i n 1 9 5 3 1 w a s scarcely
i n a p o s i t i o n to shop around."
138.
~ h i p
s r e p r i n t w a s unpublished, b u t Gell-Mann d e s c r i b e s i t s
c o n t e n t s i n Gell-Mann (19821, pp. 399-400.
139.

Gell-Mann (1982), p. 401-

140.
Nishi j ima a c t u a l l y published it first , i n N i s h i j ima (1955),
and he was close t o it a l r e a d y i n Nishi jima C1954) . Gell-Mann
waited u n t i l 1 9 5 6 t o p u t t h i s i d e a i n t o p r i n t , although he t a l k e d
about it with his c o l l e a g u e s a t l e n g t h .

The apparent stability of m a t t e r was f i r s t given a c o n c r e t e

formulation i n terms of a c o n s e r v a t i o n iaw i n Hermann W e y l (19291 Weyl c o n j e c t u r e d that the n e g a t i v e energy s t a t e s of t h e Dirac
e q u a t i o n for e l e c t r o n s should be a s s o c i a t e d with p r o t o n s , and he
i d e n t i f i e d the e l e c t r o n and the p r o t o n with the two complementary
pairs of components i n t h e Dirac wavefunction.
H e concluded t h a t
both t h e total number of e l e c t r o n s and t h e t o t a l number of p r o t o n s
should each remain c o n s t a n t , w h i c h amounts t o two s e p a r a t e
conservation l a w s .
A t t h e time, the only known fundamental
p a r t i c l e s w e r e p r o t o n s , electrons, and photons. In such a limited
r e a l m , protons would be stable, but unfortunately, Weylrs view soon
had t o be modified.
After the discovery of the positron in 1931,
it w a s xealized t h a t t h e p o s i t r o n was much more likely to be p a i r e d
with t h e e l e c t r o n i n D i r a c ' s theory t h a n was t h e proton. This i s
141.

because the positron has the same mass as the electron, while the
proton is much heavier,
A new conservation law for heavier particles, including the
neutron, was formulated by E r n e s t Stckelberg (1938). Stckelberg
knew that neutrons interacted with protons, but he noted t h a t no
transformations of heavy particles to light particles, such as
electrons and muons, had been observed. Therefore, he proposed a
consenration law of a new quantity which he referred to as schwere
Ladung, or heavy charge.
independently, Eugene Wigner (1949)
suggested that a conservation law for the number of heavy particles
could be responsible for the stability of the proton, just as, he
claimed, the conservation law for charges was responsible for the
stability of the electron. Wigner (1952) treats the conservation
law for hoavy particles on a par with the conservation law for
electric charges, assuming that the two conservation l a w s had
similar causes, and thus similar consequences142.

See Cahn and Goldhaber (1989), Chapter 3

143 . Gell-Mann and Pais (1955). At the time, it was not d e a i r

that the two varieties of K-meson, O and 7 , were just d i f f e r e n t
decay modes of the same particle. The decayed into .rr+.rr- and the
T decayed into T'T-a'.
Gell-Mann and Pais restricted themsefves to
the 8 , but their arguments apply equally well to the r . Note that
these ideas emerged before the invariance under charge conjugation
( C ) and parity ( P ) were challenged- Later their arguments were
used in conjunction with combined CP-invariance, rather than just
C-invariance alone.

144.

Gell-Mann and Pais (1955), p. 1389 -

145.

Lande, et al . (1956).

6
Dalitz (1953), He later published the analysis, including
more data, in Dalitz (1954).

147. Dalitz (1954). In the D a l i t z plot, equal areas in the plot

correspond to equal volumes of (covariant) phase space . [ P a i s
(19861, p. 5241
148 -

Yang (1957), p.

149.
Lee and Yang (1956a, 1957) Aithough Lee and Yang got the
credit (and the Nobel prize) for the idea of parity-nonconservation
in K-decay, Pais thinks that it might have occurred to several
people independently. He rernembers that the issue was raised, more
as a logical possibility than a favourable option, at least as
early as 1954, at a Kyoto conference. According to Pais, Brueckner
said that, "If one assigns spin higher than zero to these
particles-. t h e n the same particle can decay into two or three
pions without any violation of parity conservation. [Pais (1986),

p * 5251

150. Lee and Yang (1956a). In a footnote at the end of the paper.
they also noted that charge-conjugation invariance had no
experimental proof either .
151 -

Lee and Yang (1956), p. 2%

153.

Cahn and Goldhaber ( 1 9 8 9 ) ~p. 561,

Gamin, Lederman. and Weinrich (1957), Friedman and Telegdi

(1957). The argument for charge conjugation invariance was given
by Lee, Oehme, and Yang (1957),
.. if any left-right symmetry of
the form 0 - p is found, the part of the a s y m m e t r y that is
independent of the distortion of the final-state wave functions can
arise only i f charge conjugation symmetry breaks d o m for the weak
interactions. In particular, in decays where there is no strong
final-state interactions, as for example, in ~ + - q ~ ' + vand
,
p++e++2 v decays, the d e t e c t i o n of parity nonconservation through the
observation of
u - p becomes
impossible if C is strictly
conserved- L e e , Oehme, and Yang (1957), p. 342.1
154.

155.

Note the second decay is now written p++e++v+v.

156.

Lee and Yang (1957), Landau (1957)-

157.

Landau (19571, p. 3 3 6 .

158.

Christenson et al. (1964)-

159.
CPT-invariance is the minimal sufficient ground for t h e
correspondence of particles to anti-particles, and for the
equalities of masses and lifetimes for these pairs of o b j e c t s .
Pauli (1955), pp. 30-51 was the first to cal1 attention to CPT, but
it was also discussed by Lee, Oehme and Yang (1957), Lders (1957).
and Jost (1957). Jost gave the most general proof, based upon the
a x i o r n a t i c formulation of q u a n t u m field theory.
See Sakurai
(1964), Chapter 6, for a good discussion.

160 -

Salam (1957).

161

Salam (l957), p. 299-

from the Greek for "handu was coined by

162. The word llchiralitylt,
Lord Kelvin in a different context.
The word "helicity" was
introduced
by
Watanabe
to
replace
the
awful
term
spirality" . [Sakurai (1964), p . 311
163- Lee and Yang (1957).

164.

Lee and Yang (1957), p. 1671-

165.

Pauli (19331, p. 157.

Gamow and Teller (19361, p . 897,

167 Note t h a t Gamow-Telles transitions

unchanged. Kahn and Goldhaber (19891, p. 1581

leave

the

parity

168. As n o t e d before, this was noticed by Oskar Klein (1948) who

noticed the similarity of the B-decay constant to that f o r p-decay,
Tiomno and Wheeler ( 1 9 4 9 ) who n o t i c e d its sirnilarity to that of pcapture, and Lee, Rosenbluth and Y a n g ( 1 9 4 9 ) who noticed both.
169.

Sudarshan and Marshak 19571, p , 118,

170 -

Michel (1950),

171.

Pais (19861, p. 530-

172. Konopinski and Mahrnoud did not use t h i texminology, and they
got the number assignrnents wrong, b u t the essential idea w a
t h e r e - [ G r i f f i t h s (1987) p . 261

173.
Note that lepton conservation i m p l i e s
neutrinoless double P-decay,
( A , Z b ( A , Z k Z ) +Se'
[Pais (1986), p - 530 - 1

the absence

of

170 These letters stand f o r scalar, vector, tensor, and axialv e c t o r - -In this context, P stands for pseudoscalar.

175-

Sudarshan and Marshak (1957), p - 122 -

Sudarshan and Marshak (1957), p. 126.

177,

Sudarshan and Marshak (1958).

178 They also required t h a t the two-component wave-function

satisfy a second order equation, and that there be no gradients i n
the interaction Hamiltonian- This will l a t e x raise questions of
quantization, and the effects due t o strong interactions.

179.

See

Sakurai (1964) , Section 4 - 3 , f o r a good d i s c u s s i o n .

180.
Sudarshan and Marshak (1957, L9S81 w e r e led to this
expression by chirality invariance. Sakurai (1958) was led to this
fo-m instead by rewiring invariance of t h e four-fermion
~amiltonianunder separate reversal of the sign of t h e mass of each
fermion in the ~ i r a cequation, but t h i s route turned out to be
equivalent. [Sudarshan and Marshak ( 1 9 5 8 1 , p . 18611

181- Gell-Mann and Lvy (1960)- See Adler and Dashen (19681,
Chapter 2

182- Ashkin, Blaser, Feiner, and Stern (19561 - The reason that it
took so long to confirm the resonance w a s that phase shift analysis
was not unique- This w a s s h o w by Yang, who was then a tudent of
Fermi. Kahn and Goidhaber (1989), p - 1051

184-

Cahn and Goldhaber (1989). p - 1 0 7 -

186
F i r s t , the p meson (I=J=l)
was observed as a peak w i t h mass
770 MeV and width 150 MeV in the T+T- distribution produced in the
reaction -rr+&S.rr+N[Erwin et al. (1961)1
Then followed the w meson (I=0, &=l) with mass 783 MeV, width 10
MeV, first seen as a 37r peak in p p 5 n . [Maglic et al. (1961)1
Finally, there was the 7 (l=J=O)with mass 549 MeV and width 1 kev,
which was a 37r peak i n n++d+p+p+lr++~~+a-[ P e v s n e r et a l . (1961)1
187- Particles with e x t r e m e l y short lifetirnes can be identified
with resonances as measuwed through the uncertainty relation
AEAt-hThe energy uncertainty is reflected in the width of the
resonance, usually 10 to 200 MeV, which implies lifetimes of the
order of 1 0 -S~- ~ The term resonance is applied when the produced
state decays strongly as in the p or K'- Many of these, like the
K r are identified as higher-energy, or excited states, of
previously known particles. In contrast, states like the A , which
decay weakly, are termed particles - In the early sixties, Geoffrey
Chew criticized this distinction as artificial, and he proposed
that al1 particles and resonance be put on an equal footing. This
view has survived to the present day. [Cahn and Goldhaber (1989),
pp. 107-91

VIL Yang-Miiis Theory and Gauge Fields (1954-56)

1. Yang-Mills theory

Chen Ning Yang and Robert MilIs were very impressed with the relation between
conservation of charge and phase invariance, and in 1954, they proposed that the conservation
of isotopic spin shodd also be related to an invariance law.' Accordingly, they attempted to
generaIize the concept of gauge invariance to the case of the strong mteractions,
We have tried to generalize ibis concept of gauge invariance to apply to isotopic spin
conservation. It tums out that a very natutal generalization is possible. The field that
plays ILe role of the electromagnetic field is here a vector field that satisfes a
nodinea.equation even in the absence of other fields?
The field must be nonlinear, because unlike the electromagnetic field which carries no electrc
charge, the field in question carries with it an isotopic spin, and so it acts as a source for

In June 1954, Yang and Mills presented their full theory.' They formulated a
principle of isotopic gauge invariance, associated with the existence of a b field, just as phase

invariance is associated with the electromagnetic field. For Yang and MUS, the conservation
of isotopic spin is identical with the requirement of invariance of ail interactions under

isotopic spin rotation,

... when electromagneetic interactions can be neglected, as we shdl hereafter assume to

be the case, the orientation of the isotopic spin is of no physical significance. The
dif5erentiation between a neutron and a proton is then a purely arbitrary process. As
usually conceived however, this arbitrariness is subject to the following limitation:
once one chooses what to c d a proton, what a neutron, one is then not fkee to make
any choices at other space-time points.'
In this paper, Yang and Mills are not just looking for an invariance present already in the

equations-they are requiring aii interactions to be invariant under independent rotations of the
isotopic spin at al1 space time-points, which impIies that the relative orientation of the isotopic
spin at two space-time points becomes irnmeasucable, giving a local gauge invariance. This
gauge invariance is imposed by the introduction of the b field. The b field satisfies nonlinear

differentid equations, and its quanta are particles with spin 1, isotopic spin 1, and electnc
charge k e or zeroYang and Mills were inspired by the gauge invariance present in quazltum
electrodynamics, as is clear nom their reference to Pauli's well-laiown 1941 paper in Reviews
of Modern Physics, 'Relaavistic field theores of elementary particles".s In this paper, Pauli

pays ample attention to gauge invariance. He shows how the electromagnetic field can be
introduced into the Lagrangian by making the replacement,

where

is the charge in unis (tic)"? For Yang and Mills, this was a well-known feahne of

electrodynSiIILics, but it was a natural symmetcy discovered in the equations of electrodynafnics

after they had already been f~rmulated-~
Neither the laws of classical nor of quantum

electrodynamics were founded using the gauge concept:

As Abers andeLeelater commented,

It is supererogatory to observe that the photon was not discovered by requiring local
gauge invariance. Rather, gauge transformations were discovered as a useN property
of Maxwell's equations?

It was in his 1941 paper that Pauli introduced the concepts of gauge transformations of the

first and second End, which correspond to global and local gauge invariance. Pauli noted
that, "... the potentids [of the electromagnetic field] undergo gauge transformations of the

second type.'"'

This type of gauge transformation, a Local tratlsformation, is equivalent to a

change of phase factor,

+eiK iG
As Yang and Mills emphasize in 1954, this change of gauge requires the introduction of the

electromagnetic field in order to maintain the invariance of the Lagrangiae In an anaiogous

rnanner, Yang and Mills introduce a local variation of isotopic spin, and then they force the

Lagrangian to remain invariant by the introduction of a new field,

To preserve invariance, one notices that in electrodynamics, it is necessary to

counteract the variation of a with x, y, z, and t by introducing the electromagnetic
field A, which changes under a transformation as,

In an entirely similar manner, we introduce a B field in the case of the isotopic gauge
transformation to comteract the dependence of S [the isotopic spin rotation] on x, y, z,
and t. It will be seen that this natural generalization d o w s for very little arbitrariness.
The field equations satisfied by the twelve independent components of the B fie14
which we shalI cal1 the b field, and their interaction with any field having an isotopic
spin are essentially fixed, in much the same way that the fiee electromagnetic field and
its interaction with charged fields are essentially determined by the requinment of
gauge invarian~e.~
'
Yang and Mills consider a two-component wave fimction

+ describing a field with

isotopic spin-%. Under an isotopic spin transformation, it transfonns as,

JI-w
where S is a 2x2 unitary matrix with deteminant 1. This is the group

(4)

su(2)-I2To maintain

invariance of the Lagrangian, they require that aIf derivatives of >G appear in the following
combination,
( 3 , - i o B & J,

where the B, are 2x2 matrices. After a little algebra, they fhd the isotopic gauge

transformation is,

This is tncky. The Iast term of this equation is a linear combinaion of the isotopic spin

(5)

matrices T, so the B, field must itself contain a linear combination of the these matrices c* It
tums out that the relevant part of the B, fieId takes the f ~ r m , ' ~
BK-2b; T

(7)

To obtain the interaction between any field $ of arbitrary isotopic spin with the b field, Yang
and MiUs replace the denvatives of

+ with,
@,-2i~b,-T)~i

(8)

The corresponding transformation of b, is cumbersome, but it is only necessary to consider

the infinitesimal gauge transformations,
S-1-2iT-6 w

which give,

The field equations for the b field can then be derived fkom the total Lagangian density,I4

where
ab, ab,

f,Lv-

a ; ~-q
; -2 ~b,xb,

The next step is to quantize the b field. Yang and MUS follow the canonical method

of quantization, and once they are done, the quanta clearty have spin 1, and isotopic spin 1.''

From the conservation of electric charge, it is also clear that the b quanta come in three
charge States, ie, and zero. There is a problem, however, with the mass of the b quantum,
We next come to the question of the mass of the b quantum, to which we do not have
a satisfactory ansver. One may argue that without a nucleon field, the Lagrangian
would contain no quantity of the dimension of a mas, and therefore the mass of the b
quantum in such a case is zero. This argument is, however, nibject to the criticism
that, Iike al1 field theories, the b field is beset with divergences, and dimensional
arguments are not satisfactory
In electrodynamics, by the requirement of electric
charge conservation, it is argued that the mass of the photon vanishes. Corresponding
arguments in the b field case do not exist, even though the conservation of isotopic
spin still holds. We have therefore not been able to conclude anything about the mass
of the b quantum.16

....

Obviously, this is a very serious p r o b h . Local gauge invariance requires that the m a s of
the gauge potential field be identicdy zero for any gauge theory.17 Therefore, if there were

any mass term for the b field in the Yang-Mills Lagrangian, it would spoil the gauge

invariance, yet on the other hand, if the b field were of zero mass, then it would be unabIe to
reproduce the observed short range of the nuclear force.''

From an experirnental point of

view, Yang and Mills remark that it would be inconsistent for the b field quantum to have
any mass less than that of the pion anyway, because if it did, it wodd be expected to be
created abundantiy at high energies, meaning that the charged b quanta should be

This zero-mass problem of the theory was raised quite forcefully by Pauli during

Yang's presentation of these results at Princeton in Febniary 1954. According to Yang,

Soon after my semnar began, when I had written on the blackboar,
(a,-ieB,) fi

Pauli asked, "What is the mass of this field B,?" 1 said we did not know. Then 1
resumed my presentation, but soon Pauli asked the same question again. 1said
somerhing to the effect that that was a very complicated problem, we had worked on it
and had come to no definite conclusions. 1 d
lremember his repartee: "That is not
sdficient excuse." 1 was so taken aback that 1 decided, after a few moments
hesitation, to sit dom. There was general embarrassment. Finally Oppenheimer said,
"We should let Fang] proceed." 1 then resumed, and Pauli did not ask any questions
during the seminar?
Afier the presentation, Pauli left a note for Yang, and the two of them met later. Pauli

explained that his reaction had been so sharp because he had already been workuig on simila.
Iines, and he had been fniseated by this mass difficulty for over six months.

ii. Pauli, KIein, and Shaw

Pauli had first raised the idea of applying the principle of local gauge invariance to
the concept of isospin at the June 1953 Lorentz-Kamerlingh Onnes conference in Leiden.
During the question period following Pais' paper, "Isotopic spin and mass quantizati~n'~,
Pauli

commented,
1 am very much. in favour of the general principle to bring empirical conservation Iaws
and invariance properies in connection with mathematical groups of transformations of
the Iaws of nature- If besides the consemation of energy-momentum and of charge,
the conservation of the property defhed as number of nucleons and of the charge
independence of the nuclear forces are weli estabfished, they have indeed, as Pais tred
now to express mathematically, also to be connected with group theoretical properties
of the law of nature.... 1 would like to ask in this connection whether the
transformation group with constant phases can be amplified in such a way that the
meson-nucleon interaction is connected with the amplined group. The main problem
hereby seems to me the proper incorporation of the c o u p h g constant into the
group?

Pais answered that the possibility of an amplified gauge group had been on his mind as well,
but that so far, he had not yet achieved any results. According to the conference proceedings,
Wouthuyzen then brought up the fact 9 a t years earlier, he had seen an attempted unincation

of electromagnetism and gravitation using a 6-dimensional manifold in which there appeared

equations similar to those of Pais' paper. Wouthuyzen ventured that a combination of the
higher-dimensional space with Pais' ideas,

"...rnight conceivably lead to an incorporation of

weak couplings into the formalism.'"

This comment must have stirred somethhg within Pauli, because a month after the
conference, he sent Pais a rough manuscript dong these lines, entitied, "Meson-nucleon

interaction and dserential geometry" that begins, "Wn'tten d o m July 21 till25 [1953] to sec
how it is looking."') In this paper, Pauli used a Riemannian geometry similar to that which

was fit used by

Kaluza (1921) and then Oskar Klein (1926), but whereas Kaluza and Klein

each used a five-dimensional manifold in an attempt to unite gra..tation and

electromagnetism, Pauli added stU another dimension, using instead a six-dimensional
manifold. Pauli used these two extra dimensions in an effort to inchde the strong

interactions, and he interpreted the mathematicaI structure differently than Kaluza and Klein
had. Whereas they had identified the electromagnetic potential with components of the metric
tensor, Pauli identified it M e a d with the Christoffel connection, As for the field strengths of
the meson-nucleon interactions, PauIi associated them with components of the curvature

tensor."

In this long letter to Pais, Pauli noted that local isospin gauge invariance demands the
introduction of a triplet of vector particles, and he managed to fkd as his "mainresult", the
correct expression for the corresponding field strengths. He did not, however, give the
associated dynaDaicd field equations? In December 1953, stl a few months before Yang's
talk, Pauli became frustraated with his inability to solve the zero-mass problem, and he wrote a

second time to Pais,

If one tries to formulate field equatiom... one wiU always obtain vector mesom wirh
rest mass zero. One could try to get other meson fields-pseudoscalars with positive
rest mass... but I feel that is too artifi~ial.~~
Pauli's enthusiasm was wanig, and he never published his r e s u l t ~ . ~
Many years earlier, in 1938, Oskar Klein had -en

a remarkable paper, in which he

also applied the Kaluza-Klein theory to nuclear interactions, entitled, "On the theory of
charged fields." Klein had presented his work at the Conference on New Theones in Physics

in Poland, where it lay in obscurity mtil 1981, when it was finaily noticed by Cecilia

163

~arlskog? It is astonishing that without even considering non-Abelian transformatons, and

by using oniy a singk extra dimension, Klein was able to derive a structure now recognized

as the SU(2) isospin group.

Klein's theory was developed in the fnime of the five-dimensional approach, and it
attempted a unification of the gravitationd, electromagnetic, and nucIear interactions. Klein
wrote this paper only three years afier Yukawa's suggestion that nuclear forces might be
mediated by massive mesons, whkh were d l referred to as heavy electrons or mesotons.

Proceeding 60m the assumption that the nuclear interactions are mediated by vector particles,
Klein extended his 1926 work on quantum theory and ive-dimensional relativity to take the
meson-nucleon interaction into account As before, he related periodicity in the nfth
coordlnate x0 to Planck's constant, but this time, not all of the fields were independent of the
fi& co~rdinate.'~Although neutral particles were still independent of xO, charged particles
were not,

...just as the field quantities contain parts depending upon x0 representing charged
fields, and parts without x0 representing the ordinary electromagnetic and gravitational
fields, we shdl assume that also the spinors con& of xO-f.keecomponents representing
neutral particles (neutron, neutrino) and of x0 components representing charged
particles (proton, electron)?
Whereas n 1954, Yang and Mills were attempting ta describe the strong force, back in 1938,

the distinction between strong and weak interactions was not yet clear, and so KIein does not
distinguish between the two types of nuclear interaction. His Lagrangian includes interactions
between the heavy particles, the proton and neutron, and between heavy and light particles,

the electron and neutrino,

The Lagrangian L0may belong either to the pair neutron-proton or the pair neutrinoelectron.... it is worth while to notice that the complete Lagrangian will imply an
164

interaction of heavy and light spinor particles not only through the intermediate of the
electromagnetic field, but also through the B-field, an interaction which wiIl entail the
occurrence of /3-processes, the probability of which may be calcdated on the basis of
the theory developed in this report?
Klein placed the two heavy particles in one isotopic spin doublet, and the two light particles

in the other?

Mediating between either two heavy doublets, or a heavy doublet and a Iight

doublet, were the A field, representing the eIectromagnetic potentiai, and the B and B fields,
representing positively and negatively charged mesons, respectively. Note that there is no

neutral meson in the theory, although in response to a question fiom &ler d e r the
presentation, Klein showed that an uncharged meson can be easily incorporated into the
formalim~'~Ail AUee of the mediating particles, (or four if the neutral meson is included),
enter the equations within the same set of matrices, and consequently, ali of the interactions
share a single couphg constant: both the nuclear interactions and the electromagnetic

interactions depend upon the constant %.

Klein's theory contained only one new parameter, and that was the mass of the meson,
which was added to the Lagrangian by hand,

As to the rest mass of the new particle which does not appear in the ordinary field
equations, it might be introduced by the addition of a term to the Lagrangian without
disturbing the invariance. But it is not impossible that a M e r development of the
theory will make this somewhat arbibary addition superfluous, the mass appearing as
some sort of self energy determined by the other lengths entering in the theory?

Note that Klein says that the introduction of the mass term does not diturb the invariance; he
is clearfy referring to elech.omagnetic gauge invariance. The addition of a mass term

unquestionably breaks the SU(2) gauge invariance inherent up to this point, but since Klein
was nof demanding SU(2) invariance, he was not concemed with its violatiodS At the

conference, Klein's work did not generate a great deal of dixussion, and his ideas were not

165

fully appreciated. Since the paper was never published in a reguiar journal, and perhaps
because the Second World War broke out soon afterward, the link that Klein had estabiished

between gauge theory and nuclear interactions went Iargely unnbticed for over f
was left to

i years. It

Yang and Mills-to derive SU(2) of isotopic spin.

Shortly after the discovery of Yang and Milis, however, RonaId Shaw reached a
similar renilt by a different route?

Shaw was working on his Ph.D. under Abdus Salam

when he developed an SU(2) gauge theory in early 1954, but he did not subrnit his

dissertation until 1955. His thesis consks of two parts:

Part 1 de& with represenrations of

the extended Lorentz group and their applications to particle physics, and Part II contains

three chapters dealing with the interactions of particle physics. It is in the final chapter that
Shaw's SU(2) construction appears, but a foobote indicates that this section was nnished in

The work described in this chapter was completed except for its extension [to the fourdimensional case] in Section 3, in Ianuary 1954, but was not pubiished. In October
1954, Yang and Mdls adopted independently the same postdate and denved nmilar consequences."
In his derivation, Shaw ran into the usual problems conceming the mass of the B-field,

Zero mass would appear to be d e d out since otherwise the neutron would have a
rapid decay N+P+B-. In fact, one would have expected the B-particles to have been
observed uniess their mass was quite large, or unless the coupling constant q was very
~ma11,3~
Shaw daims that initally, he thought that the B particles were massiess, and so he put the
idea aside since it clearly did not match up to observation.39 He showed it to his supervisor
later that year,

1 showed it to Salam but 1 do not think that he much appreciated it at the tirne. 1 do
not at dl blame him for this-1 probably told him about it in a very dismissive way,

since the relevant particles, surely PO, I thought, did not exist Much later ... he toId
me that Yang and MiIls had had the same idea and told me to write mine up (which 1
did not)?'
Shaw does not blame Salam for the oversight, and he maintains that SaIam fiequently
announced the contribution at conferences. In fact, in his 1979 Nobel Prize talk, Salam
referred to non-Abelian gauge structure as the Yang-Mius-Shaw theory?

2. Utiyama and the gauge potential(1956)

A more generai approach to non-Abelian gauge theories was adopted by Ryoyu

Utiyama in Japan. In early 1954, Utiyama was working on the tetrad formulation of
gravitation in preparation for a visit to Princeton, when he noticed that gravitation and
electromagnetism had a mathematical property in common, the connecrion."

He considered

that dus might be a common feature of al1 fundamental interactions at some level, and so he

constructed the gauge theory which applied to dl Lie groups. When he arrived in Princeton
in April, however, he read a preprint of the Yang-MiIls theory, and he was stunned by the

resemblance to its own,

1 took a look at it and found may formulae already familia. to m e 4 immediately
realized that he had found the same theory as 1 had developed. 1 was too deeply
shocked to examine Yang's paper closely and compare it carefidly with my work."

Six months later, Utiyama retumed to Yang's paper, which had since been published in
October 1954." When he read it, Utiyama reaiized that Yang and Milis had found only an

example of non-Abelian gauge theory, whereas he had developed a general idea of gauge-

theory which could be applied to gravitation as weli as electromagnetism. Utiyama decided to

publish his work after dl, and to include an extra section in which he discussed the

Yang-Mills theory as an example of his own. He included this section, he said, partly
because Yang and MUS had aIready publisbed, and partly because he thought that it wodd
not be fair to them if he did not refer to their paper after he had read it4'

In 1956, Utiyama's work appeared as, "Invariant theoretical interpretaton of

interaction". In the introduction, he starts with a Lagtangian whch is invariant under constant
phase transformations, and he then replaces this transformation with a gauge transformation
with a varying phase fictnr Ee carniders the geneat case,

Let us consider a system of fields @(x), which is invariant under some transformation
group G depending on parameters ,,a
...,+. Suppose that the aforementioned
parameter-group G is replaced by a wider group G', deriveci by replacing the
parameters E'S by a set of arbitrary fiinctions c(x)'s, and that the system considered is
invariant under the wider group Gr."

Utiyama is interested in what kind of field needs to be introduced to maintain the wider
invariance of the local symmetry group, how this field transforms, and whether its interaction
with the original field can be detennined uniquely. He goes on to apply his method to derive

electromagnetism, Yang-Mills theory, and gravitiition, and he highiights the mathematical

simiIarities between the different theories,
We shall find a . analogy between the transformation characters of the electromagnetic
field A,, the Yang-Mills field B,, and Christoffel's asnity
in the theory of
general reIativity. Furthemore, we shall understand the reason why in the Yang-Mi&
field strength, the quadratic term B,xB, appears which is quite Nnilar to that
occUmng in the Riemann-Christoffel tensor RA".,

Wyama's breakkough is the recognition that gauge theories share an element of

mathematical structure, the connecticm. This is expressed in the form of a covariant
derivative V , p . The idea of a covariant derivative is f d a r from general relativity, but

Utiyama derives it for gauge theory in general, fiom symmetry arguments, and he does not

168

need to rely upon the concept of paraiiel d e r .

In the usual textbooks of general relatvity. the covariant derivative of any tensor is
introduced by using the concept of paralle1 displacement On the other han& we shalI
see ... that the covariant derivative of any tensor or spinor can be derived fkom the
postdate of invariance under the "generaiized Lorentz transformations" denved nom
the six panuneters of the usual Lorentz group with a set of six arbitracy functions of x.
In deriving such covariant derivatives, it is unnecessary to use explicitly the notion of
pardiel displacement"
Utiyama's originai contribution was thus his work on gauge theory in general, and its
application to gra~ity-*~
Yang was not aware of this mathematicai ~imiIarity:~

--.when MUS and 1worked on nomAbefian gauge felds, our motivation was
completely divorced fiom general relativity, and we did not apprecizte that gauge
fields and general relativity are somehow related Only in the late 1960s did 1
recognize the structurai similarity mathematicdy of non-Abelian gauge fields with
generai relativity.. ."

In his 1956 paper, Utiyama also expressed an interest in applying his method to the
interactions between mesons and nucleons as soon as the appropriate transformation group
was found. When this actually happened in the 1960s, Utiyama must have been as pieased as

anybody, even though he aiways regretted not having published his work sooner.

3. Concluding remarks

Impressed by the conservation of isotopic spin, Yang and MilIs extended globd SU(2)

to local SU(2) by forcing the Lagrangian to remain invariant through the introduction of a b
field. Although local gauge invariance was an obvious symmetry of

QED,Yang and Mills

took the bold step of imposing it upon an internai symmetry group. The idea looked
promising, but there was a problem. Local gauge invariance of electromagnetism impiies that
the photon has

zero mass, and similady, local gauge invariance of isotopic spin implies that

169

the b field shouid also have zero m a s The nature of the strong interaction,however, impiies
that the b quanta shodd be heavy, to account for the shoa range of the interaction. Various

strategies wodd soon be adopted to deal with this problem, as we shaU see, yet it took years

before it was discovered that the gauge theory discovered by Yang and M a s is suitable not
only for the strong interaction, but aiso for the weak interaction.

I.
Y a n g and Mills (1954a)This is the first of two papers
published in 1954 by Yang and Mills . It is only one page long, and
it began as an abstract for the A p r i l 1954 meeting of the American
Physical Society in Washington- According to Yang, however, most
of the work had been already completed by February 1954 - [Yang
(19831, p . 191

2.

Yang and Miils (1954a), p - 631-

3.

Yang and Mills (19S4b).

5Pauli (1941)Pauli had discussed gauge invariance even

earlier, in his 1933 monograph review of quantum mechanics, which
included a short historical review of the pxinciple, referring to
the papers by Fock, London, and Weyl - [ P a u l i . (1933) , p . 311
6-

Pauli (1941), p. 206.

7,
The replacement of the derivative which Pauli outlined
appeared, among other places, in Weyl (1931a), p. 100. In 1953, a
year before the Yang-Mills paper, J u l i a n Schwinger published the
second paper of his series entitled "The theory of the quantized
fieldN- Schwinger spoke of the gauge nature of the electromagnetic
i e l d as a generally known interpxetation, "The postulate of
general
[that is,
local]
gauge invariance motivates
the
introduction of the electromagnetic fieldIf a l 1 f i e l d s and
sources are subjected to the general gauge transformation
Ix=exp ( - iX ( x ) E 1 x
the Lagrange function we have been considering alters in the
following marner:
I P = ~ ?j,a,h
+
The addition of the electromagnetic field Lagrange function . - .
provides a compensating quantity through the associated gauge

transformation
'A,=A,-a,A.

"

[Schwinger (1953), p. 7241

Note that the characteristic term wcornpensation~appears here for
the first time, not in the paper by Yang and Miils.[Vizgin (1994),
p. 3031
8.
See Schweber
electrody~larnics.
9-

(1994)

for

the

development

of

quantum

Abers and Lee (19731, p - 1 0 -

"We should like in ~articularto note the difference between

fields like U , bfr)
which under the gauge group suffer a
transformation of the type u ~ ~ ~
e + uand
~ ~ fields,
)
such as the
electromagnetic field, the potentials of which undergo gauge
transformations of the second type,
10-

&4,W E I i (aa/axk)
This distinction is manifested through the fact that only
expressions which are bilinear in U and d are associated with
measurable quantities even when the associated field is
-physically
qyantized-accordhgto the Bose tatistics. . . . it follow that, in
principle, only gauge invariant quantities can be obtained by
direct measurement [Pauli (1941), p - 2071
11- Yang and Miils (1954b1,p. 192.
12. Although group theory played little part in the training of
most physicists working in particle physics at the tirne, Yang was
an exception. His B .Sc. thesis, completed in China, was titled,
"Group theory and rnolecular spectranJPickering (198 4 ) , p. 1611

13 - Yang and Mill (1954b), p . 193 - Note that the nine components
of b,, for p=1,2,3 are real, while the three components of b, are
pure imaginary.
14. Note that this Lagrangian includes terms representing the
self-couplings of three and four b quanta,
15.

Yang and Miils (1954b), pp. 194-95.

16.

Yang and Mills (1954b), p. 195-

17. This was shown for quantum electrodynamics by Pauli in 1941He showed that, V - . the rest mass of the photons must be exactly
zero for [gauge] transformations of the second type," and, " . .- an
assumption to the effect that the photons have a very s m a l l but
finite rest mass seems to be physically unsatisfactory. [Pauli
(1941),p. 207, 2191 Note that the QED Lagrangian has no mass term
for the electromagnetic field, and being based upon a
generalization of QED, the Yang-Mills Lagrangian does not have a
mass term for the b field. Of course, both Lagrangians have mass
tenns for the spinor fields, but these do not ruin gauge
invariance.
18As Wick (1938) showed, because of the uncertainty prin.ciplel
range is inversely proportional to mass . If the b field had a mass
zero, like the photon, it would i m p l y that the strong force should
have an infinite range, j u s t like electromagnetism-

19.

Yang and Miils (1954b). p. 195.

20.

Yang (l983), p - 20.

22.

P a i s (19531, p. 8.87-

23.
P a i s (19861, pp. 5 8 4 - 8 5 A copy of - t h e l e t t e r appears in
OrRaifeartaigh (1997), pp, 171-75.

24.
OrRaifeartaigh (1997). p - 167, Pauli relates the gaugepotentials of the meson-nucleon interaction t o the curvature tensor
through a procedure now known as dimensional reduction.
Dimensional reduction is a technique by which higher-dimensional
systems can be reduced to lower-dimensional ones.
ft is very
powerful in the context of gauge theory because it converts
coordinate transformations in the full space, six dimensions in
this case, into gauge transformations in the space-tirne subspaceThis allows certain components of the Riemann tensor, along with
the covariant derivative, to be interpreted as components of
curvature in the full space and as field strengtns in spacetime.[OrRaifeartaigh (1997), pp. 50-52, 167-1691 In xecent years,
there has been a revival in interest of dimensional reduction in
the wake of the advent of string theory, which has suggested that
the use of 10- or 26- dimensional spaces might lead to a unified
theory of interactions, or a quantum theory of gravity. See, for
example, Appelquist , Chodos, and Freund (1987).
25.

Pais (1986), pp. 584-85-

27. According to Pais, Pauli had given lectures on the subject in

the autumn of 1953, and although his notes were printed, they
appeared only in an undated Italian published lecture series. They
were never published i n a journal, and nelther they, nor the
letters t o Pais, appear in Paulirs C d l e c t e d Scientific Papers-

28.
Jarlskog (1981).
Jarlskog notes in a reference that she
herself brought up Klein's 1 9 3 8 earlier in a 1979 conference.
Klein's paper was reprinted in 1989, again in the proceedings of a
Polish conference29-

Remember that this periodicity in 2 is gauge invariant.

30-

K l e i n (19381, p . x i x .

31.

Klein (19381, p . xxxi.

32.
K l e i n (1938), p. xx. Recall that Kemmer (1937) also placed
the electron and neutrino in an isotopic spin doublet,
33.

Klein (1938), pp. xxxii-xxxiii,

34.

Klein (19381, pp. xxxii.

35.

See OfRaifeartaigh (19971, pp. 150-51 for discussion.

In his work, Shaw cites Gell-Mann (19531, Gell-Mann and Pais

(1954), and Salam and Polkinghorne (1955).

36.

37,

Shaw (1955), Part II, p - 3 7 -

38,

Shaw (1955), Part II, p - 41.

3 9 - Shaw made t h e s e d a i m s in a 1982 letter t o Kemmer, written in

response to a request for historical informationSee
O' Raifeartaigh (1997), pp- 197-99 .

41-

Salam ( 1 9 8 0 ) ~
p. 528.

4 3 - OrRaifeartaigh (1997), p. 209. Utiyama described his story in

a 1983 book, which is available only in (Tapanese and Russian, but
O rRaifeartaigh (1997) o f f e r s extracts in translation, which were
prepared for him by Izumi Tutsui and Mikhail Saveliev44, In the m e a n t i r n e , in t h e summer of 1954, Utiyama presented bis
work at a workshop-held at the Yukawa Institute in Kyoto, but fie
was disappointed with the response. Objections w e r e raised that
his results did not s e e m t o be i n agreement with the Yukawa theory,
and they were contrary to the historical precedent in which gauge
invariance follows r o m a physical interaction, rather than
demanding it. [orRaifeartaigh (l997), p . 209.1

46 .

Utiyama (1956), p. 1597 -

47.

Utiyama (1956), p - 1598 -

49 - Utiyama has been criticized on the grounds that he emphasized

the similarities between gravitation and other gauge theories
without stressing the differences. These differences, however, are
exhibited by his results.
These are (i)for gravitation, the
connection is not fundamental but is derived from a metric,
(ii) there is no equivalence principle for the non-gravitational
interactions, and (iii) the gravitational Lagrangian is linear
rather than quadratic in the field strength. Utiyama's paper does
show, however, that although the non-gravitational interactions
have no equivalence principle, they have a limited equivalence
principle in the sense that al1 fields belonging to the same
irreducible representation of the gauge group couple to the gauge
field in the same way.[OrRaifeartaigh (1997), p. 2111

50.
If Yang had been a w a r e of the link between his theory and
gravity, he could have discussed it with Weyl, w h o spent the last
six years of his life at Princeton- Unfortunately, t h e y never
spoke about it, "1 had m e t Weyl in 1949 when 1 w e n t to t h e
Institute f o r Advanced Study in Princeton as a young 'member'
1
saw hirn r o m time to time in the n e x t years 1949-55. He was very
approachable, but 1 don't remember having discussed physics or
mathematics with him at any time. His continucd interest in t h e
idea of gauge fields was not known among the physicists. Neither
Oppenheimer nor Pauli ever mentioned it. 1 suspect they also did
not t e l l Weyl of t h e 1954 papers of MiIlsr and mine. Had they done
that, or had Weyl somehow corne across Our paper, 1 imagine he would
have been pleased and excited, for we had put t o g e t h e r two things
that w e r e very close to his heart:
gauge invariance and nonAbelian Lie groups. " [Yang (1980). pp- 19-20 - 1

VIE. The Emergence of the Standard Mode1 (1956-791

1. Gauge theory and vector particles

i. Intemediate vector boson theoq

Following the establishment of the V-A theory of weak interactions in 1957, there was
speculation that the weak interactions rnight be mediated by vector fields.' If the weak
interaction is treated as a contact interaction between two currents, however, it is open to two
objections: it is non-renorrnalizable, and it violates the unitarity limit at ultra-high energies.'

These diniculties can be overcome by representing the weak interactions, instead, as a partide
exchange. In order to provide the vector and axial-vector interactions, the exchanged
particles, often refemd to as intermediate vector bosons (IVBs), must be spin-l (vector)

mesons. Only two of these particles are necessary for the V-A theory, one positively charged,
and the other negatively charged Since the aesthetics of the Yang-Mlls theory were widely
recognized at the time, it was proposed that this theory might apply to the weak interaction as

well as the strong interaction, in which case the M3s of the weak interaction might be
identified as gauge particles. Furthemore, since gauge theory grew out of an extension of
quantum electrodynamics, it was tempting to try to relate the weak interaction to

electromagnetism.
Still in 1957, Julia.Schwinger presented his anbitious paper, "A theory of the

hndamental interactions". In it, Schwinger suggested that just as r-,no,and i

are members
of a single isospin multiplet, so the photon and the two IVBs are members of a single family,

a family of three Z particles? This idea related the electromagnetic and weak interactions,
since dl three of the mediating particles were in the same family, but there were diniculties.

Ernpirically, it was well-known that the electromagnetic interactions were a few orders of

magnitude stronger than the weak. Not only that, but electromagnetic interactions have
infinite range and they conserve party, while weak interactions are of very short range and
they violate parity! To solve the difficulties with range, Schwinger proposed that the M 3 s
were very massive, while the photon was massless. This idea addressed the problem of
d i f f e ~ gcoupling strengths a s well, since at energies which were low compared to the masses

of the IVBs, the weak interactions would be highly suppressed relative to the electromagnetic
interactions. Even so, it was still puzzling how the massive IVBs could be seen as members
of the same farniIy as the massless photon.
A year later, Sidney Bludman offered a different interpretation. Bludman ignored the

electromagnetic interactions altogether, but he agreed that the IVBs of the weak interaction
could be precisely identifieci with the gauge particles of an SU(2) Yang-MiUs gauge theory.

He achieved this by postulathg that there were not only two M s , however, correspondhg to
raising and l o w e ~ g
operators in isotopic spin space which exchange charge, but that there

was also a thkd operator which wodd not exchange charge, namely, a neutral IVB. If this
neutrd mediator existed, it would be involved in weak nucleon-nucleon processes, weak

lepton-lepton processes, and weak nucieon-lepton processes, ail with no exchange of ~ h a r g e . ~

Thus, Bludman introduced a neutral current. Although he reasoned that aU three of the M3s,
the neutrai and the charged, should be massive, he was forced to introduce these masses into
the Lagrangian by band.' As expected, this posed a problem for renormalization.

In 1961, Sidney Glashow, a former student of Schwinger, was impressed by the idea
of a parallel between eiectromagnetic and weak interactions, but he thought that a triplet of

IVBs was not enough. To expiain the experimentally observed seledon d e s of iisoopic spin
and strangeness, he postulated the need for a second neutral intermediary, which he cailed

22

Thus, his mode1 incorporated the previous triplet of W s , (Z,, &, G), one negative, one

neutral, and one positive, plus another, a singlet 2,. By a clever choice of the mass temis in
the Lagrangian, Glashow allowed these two neutral particles to mix,

The reader may wonder what has been gained by the introduction of another neutral
rneson. Neither Z, nor 2, interacts with the electrical current so that neither interaction
may be identified with electromagnetism.... However, both the neutrd fields have the
same CP-property, so that linear combinations of the two fields may correspond to
"particles".'
The key was that although neither of the neutral mediators could be identified with
electromagnetism before mxing, both the photon and a neutral weak mediator could be
identified after

hg
Glashow
. gives the Lagrangian mass term,

in which the fields,

A,-Z:COS

(2)

8 ' t ~ ~ s i n O ' B , - Z ~ C O S ~ '- ~ i s i n O '

descnbe spin-1 particles with masses MA and MB. By setting M f l , Glashow was able to
i d e n e A, with the massless electromagnetic field, and B, with a massive neutral particle.

The strength of the neutral current was not prescnbed, but Glashow reasoned that since
experiment seemed to indicate that strangeness-changing neutral currents should be either
strongly suppressed or absent, he would simply enforce this condition by asniming that the Z

was much heavier than the two charged IVBs which we shall refer to as W and

w".'

At the

t h e , Glashow thought that he had solved the problem of strangeness-changing neutral

currents, but all he did, in reality, was suppress al2 neutral currents. The mode1 had other

problems as well: although Glashow hoped that it would be renormalizable, it was not, and

furthennore, the model applied to leptons only. By a shrewd choice of lepton assignrnents to
group representations, however, Glashow showed how both the parity conservation of
electromagnetic interactions and the parity violation of the weak interactions could be
combined in a single d e d model of both. In the language of group theory, Glashow had
exploited the local gauge group SU(2)xU(I).

In 1960, Sakurai turneci the Yang-Mius theory back upon the strong interactions. He
was very impressed by the fact that local gauge transformations associated with isospin

conservation demanded a vector field, and in fact, he was puzzled that this idea had received
so little attention? Sakurai noticed that the strong interaction not only exhibits conservation
of isotopic spin, but it also exhibits conservation of hypercharge and baryon number-Io
Consequently, he offered an extension of the Yang-Mas tiieory, in which, in addition to the
original triplet of spin-l gauge particles coupled to isotopic spin, theTe were also two other
gauge p h c l e s , one coupled to strangeness, and one to baryon number." Even though the
hypercharge and isotopic spin currents are broken by the presence of the electromagnetic and

weak interactions, Sakurai felt that these were exact symmetries of the strong interaction,

... these three couplings, which are the only couplings deeply rooted in the exact
intemal symmetnes of strong interactions, are the on& "fbndamental"couplings of
strong interactions.'2
By identifj6ng these symmetries as exact, he recognized that he faced the zero-mass problem

of Yang and Mills, but he brushed it aside, hoping that later authors would solve it,

By this time an intelligent reader rnust have made' the following objection: The B
fields cannot be massive because the mass term m'~: in the Lagrangian certainly does
not satisfy your gauge principle. This is a valid objection, perhaps the mot serious
objection to our theory. We wodd like to believe that the mass terms do vanish for
the bare Lagrangian, and that the empirical mass ternis ... reflect, in a certain sense,

our failure of our present-day field the0ry... the author hopes that this publication may
prompt some ciever ideas-.. 13

Sakurai was forced to insert the masses of the five vector mesons into the Lagrangian by

hand. Although these five particles did not trrm out to be the gauge particles which Sakurai
had hoped, his theory still enjoyed some success, as it effectively predicted the properties of
five vector mesons, a triplet and the two single& aU of which were soon discovered in
resonances. They became known as the p, a,and 4.l4

In 1961, Gell-Mann and Glashow produced a catalogue of the various groups upon
which gauge-invariant field-theories could be based. They recognized that in the case of

Yang-Mills theory, this gauge invariance could only be only partial, however, since some of
the relevant currents are not conserved. The isotopic spin and hypercharge currents of the
strong interaction, for instance, are not conserved by the electromagnetic and weak

interactions, while the weak axial-vector current is not consemed by the electromagnetic and
strong interactions.15 In addition, they suggested that partial gauge invariance may apply to
either the strong or weak interactions, but not to both at once,

In general, the weak and strong gauge symmetries WU not be mutually compatible.
There will also be conflicts with the electromagnetic gauge symmetry, conflicts that
must be resolved in favour of electromagnetism, since its gauge invariance is exact
We have not attempted here to describe the three kinds of interaction together, but
only to speculate about what the symmetry of each one might look like in an ideal
limit where symmetry-breaking effects disappear?
Ln this paper, Glashow and Gell-Mann explored theories of vector bosons invariant under
conrinuous groups of coordinate-dependent Iinear trandonnations, and upon analysis of their
differing syrnmetry properties, they concluded that aiI these theories could be expressed with

Lie algebras." The various types of symmetry group included: the orthogonal groups O(n),

the speciai unitary groups SU(n), the symplectic groups Sp(2n), and the Lie groups

corresponduig to the exceptional Lie algebras G,, F, E6,E$, and E,.

Aside fkom the local gauge invariances of Yang-Mills theory, they discussed the
presence of higher rank global symmetries which could be used for particie classification.

They reasoned that within generalized Yang-Miustheory, the field particles which couple to

d into multiplets, with each multiplet corresponding to an irreducible

vector mesons must f
representation of the algebra As long as this symmetry is maintained under g[obal gauge
transformations, the members of a multiplet are degenerate, and the number of particles in the

multiplet corresponds to the dimension of the representatiod8 Any mass merence

introduced into the theory can then break this global symmetry. For example, the N-A mass
difference can break the global gauge invariance of any symmetry group of the strong

interactions of higher order than the SU(2) group of isotopic spin. A candidate for this global
had already been suggested independentiy by Murray Gell-Mann and Yuval

the group

su(3).19

ii. Gell-Mann and the Eightfold Wav (1961)

Gell-Mann was trying to relate the strong interactions to the concept of currents. This
approach had met with success in both quantum electrodynamics, where electromagnetic

interactions take place between electromagnetic currents, and in the V-A theory, where weak
interactions take place between weak currents. Application to the strong interactions was
tricky, however, because

although it was easy enough to construct currents fkom leptons, it

was not at al1 clear how to constnict currents fkom hadrons.20 Sakurai had already

suggested that vector mesons be coupled to the isotopic spin current and hypercharge current,
and Gell-Mann extended this idea in 1961, by proposing a larger symmetcy group which
would incorporate both isospin and hypercharge into a symmetry of a new property which he

named unitary spin, or ~ - s p i d 'Aside nom any violation effects due to electromagnetism

and weak interactions, Gell-Mann treated aii vector mesons as completely invariant under Fspin. He viewed this as a generalization of Yang-Mills theory,

Now the vector mesons themselves carry F-spin and therefore contribute to the cunent
which is their source. The problem of comtruciing a nonlinear theory of this Iand has
been completely solved in the case of Yang and Mills and by Shaw. We have only to
generaiize their resuIt (for three vector mesons) to the case of F-spin and eight vector
meson3
In Gell-Mann's scheme, strong interactions conserve not only the three components of isospin

(Il,IJ3) and the hypercharge Y , but they also approximately conserve four more operators F,,
F,, F,, F,. Defining FI=&, F2=1-,F3=4 and ~ ~ 4 3 Y,
1 Gell-Mann
2
offered an dgebraic
system of eight operators F,..-&- Because there were eight operators, Gell-Mann named his

theory the Eightfiold ~ a y ?

These operators are related to each other by the mathematical structure of the group

SU(3). Just as II, 4, and I, form the algebra of SU(2) such that the components of 1Satie
the commutation d e s ,

[lJ,]=i~&where i.j,k=l,..,3

(3

where e,, is totally antisymmetric in ij,k, the components of F-spin satisfy the commutation

[F,Fi]=i&&

where i j , k 1 , . . , 8

(4)

The form of these commutation d e s aliow the F-spin operators to be identined with the eight

generators of the algebra SU@),

We note that the isotopic spin group is the same as the group of aiI uniary 2x2
matrices with unit detenninaat- Each of these matrices c m be written as e" where A
is a hermitian 2x2 rnatrix. Since there are uiree independent herznitian 2x2 matnces
(say, those of Pauli), there are three components of the isotopic spin. Our higher
symmetry is the simplest generalization of isotopic spin, namely the group of aU
unitary 3x3 matrices with unit determinant There are eight independent traceless 3x3
matrices, and consequently the new "unitary spin" has eight components. The frst
three are just the components of the isotopic spin, the eighth is proportionai to the
hypercharge Y (which is +l for N and K,-1 for B and
O for A, Z, K, etc.) and the
remaining four are strangeness-changing operators?'

Therefore this symmetry group incorporates isotopic spin and hypercharge, while it has new

operators F, ...F, which are chosen such that they obey the interaction rules 1 AI=%

1,l AY=l

In this way, SU(3) ties together strongly interacting particle multiplets with different values of
I and Y @ut the same spin and panty), within approximately mas-degenerate supermultiplets.

These super-multiplets correspond, of course, to irreducible representations of SU(3),

just as isotopic spin multiplets correspond to irreducible representations of SU(2). The
mathematical structure of SU(3) alIows representations of 1, 3, 8, 10, and 27 dimensions.

Although the SU(3) symmetry is not exact, it can be used to clas@ the hadrons,
We attempt ... to treat the eight known baryons as a super-multiplet, degenerate in the
limit of a certain symmetry but split into isotopic spin multiplets by a symmetrybreaking term.... The symmetry is called unitary symmetry and corresponds to the
"unitary group" in three dimensions in the same way that charge independence
corresponds to the "unitary group" in two dimensions. The eight innnitesimal
generators of the group form a simple Lie dgebra, just like the three cornponents of
isotopic spin. In this important sense, unitary symmetry is the simplest g e n e r b t i o n
of charge independen~e.~'

Just as the isotopic spin has a three-dimensional representation, the unitary spin group has an

eight-dimensional irreducible representation, an octet. This 8-dimensional representation can

be identifed as a baryon super-multiplet, an octet with &%+.

If the SU(3) symmetry were

perfect, a l l the baryons would have the same mass, which they clearly do not. Therefore, the
symmeetry is broken, and so the four components of uni-

spin F 4 . . 4 are not comerved, but

the isospin 1and the hypercharge Y me conserved, and consequently, the SU(3) octet c m be
broken down into SU(2) multiplets: a S doublet, a C triplet, a A singlet, and an N doub~et?
Gell-Mann also assigned the pseudoscalar mesons to an octet, made up of the K doublet, the

K doubIet, the

.K

triplet, and a new SingIet with isotopic spin zero which Gell-Mann predicted

and named x. Ne'eman also predicted this same meson, which he called #', but later, it

came to be known as 7 -

In this theory, there is also an octet of pseudovector mesons. Gell-Mann presented

these particles in comection with the gauge principle of Yang and Mills,

The vector mesons are introduced in a very natural way, by an extension of the gauge
principle of Yang and MlIs- Here too we have a super-multiplet of eight mesons,
corresponduig to the representation 8. In the limit of unitary symmetry and with the
m a s of these vector rnesons "tunied offr, we have a completely gauge-invariant and
minimal tbeory, just like electromagneism. When the mass is tumed on, the gauge
invariance is reduced (the gauge h c t i o n may no longer be space-thne dependent) but
the conservation of unitary spin remains exact. The sources of the vector mesons are
the conserved currents of the eight components of the UIiltary spin?
m e n the symmetry is reduced, the octet of vector mesons breaks up into a triplet p coupled
to the dll-conserved isotopic spin current, a singlet o coupled to the still-conserved

hypercharge current, and a pair of doublets M and 2 (coupled to a strangeness-changing

Notice that the p and o are the same vector mesons

current that is no longer con~erved).~~
which were predicted by Sakurai. Gell-Mann predicted that the M might correspond to

K', -

and he predicted a ninth vector meson corresponding to a singlet cailed B", which evenhialIy
came to be known as 4.

The large mass differences in the super-multiplets presented an obstacle to the

acceptance of the scheme by the physics community- Although isotopic spin syrnmetry is not

exact, for instance, the proton and neutron only have a nemly identical mas, SU(3) shows
much greater deviations wbich show up as large mass ciifferences between isotopic spin
multiplets. These differences are not just a mail percentage, rather, they can be of
comparable size to the particle masses themselves. Gell-Mann reassured, however, that this
mas-splitting, even though it was large, exhibited a simple mathematid foxm. Gell-Mann

assumed that the baryon mass differences would transform like a component of the octet, and
he reasoned that since the isotopic spin and strangeness were conserveci, the mass ciifference

should t r d o r m like the eighth component of the F-spin. In this way, he derived the sum
de,29

and this result was quite well-satisfied. In 1962, Susumu Okubo found a generalization of
this formula to the lowest order of perturbation for the case of a general super-muitiplet,
which related the masses of different multiplets of isospin and hypercharge?O

This easily reduces to Gell-Mann's result for baryons. The Gell-Mann-Okubom a s formula,
as it came to be cailed also f i t the mass clifferences in the pseudovector meson octet very

well, and it fit the merences in the pseudoscalar meson octet decently?
For the spin 312 baryon decuplet, the formula reduced to an equd spacing mie. It

predicted that the m a s merences between A-E', C ' - a , and ll-Q- would be equal. In
1961, however, only the A had been observed. The e s t evidence for the existence of the CD

and E' was only reported at a CERN confierence in 1962, but the mass-spacuig confirmeci the
prediction. At this same conference, Gell-Mann made a bold prediction about the mass and
properties of the unseen il-?

The equai spacing d e predicted a mass of 1685 MeV for the

O-, and its assignment in the SU(3) decuplet required it to carry three units of strangeness.
Mer the conference, bubble chamber physicists went home and started looking for the W.

Two years later, the Brookhaven goup found a particle wth a mass 1686k12 MeV, and a
lifetime characteristic of a weak decay, indicating the desired amount of strangene~s?~
After

this discovery, there was littie argument within the particle physics community that SU(3) was
the appropnate classification system for hadronsY
RecaIl, however, that neither Gell-Mann nor Ne'eman had been aimig at just a simple
classification of hadrons! Both were attempting, instead, to set up a quantum field theory of
the strong interactions derking from gauge invariance. As Gell-Mann remarked, "The most

attractive feature of the scheme is that it perrnits the description of eight vector mesons by a

unified theory of the Yang-Mills type (with a mass term).''35Ne'eman had sirniIar
sentiments, "The following treatment is an attempt to formulate a unified gauge, while
reducing the number of vector bosons. It does, indeed, generate a set of eight mediaing

fields..."j6
As Gell-Mann explained, he was led to this symmetry by a generabition of the
conserved vector current (CVC)hypothesis?

The CVC idea is that the hypercharge-

conserving (AY=O) portion of the vector weak current of mongly interacting particles is the
current of the isotopic spin. Gell-Mann generalized this by equating the entire vector weak
current of the strongly interacting partic1es with the curent of the F-spin. This curent has

two terms: the strangeness-preserving isotopic spin current with AY=O and [A.F=l[, and the

strangeness-changingcurrent with AY=AQ and 1 AI=% 1 . These terms correspond to F,+iF2

and F,+iF,respectively. Together, these two nirrents generate an SU(3) aigebra through the

equal-time commutation relations of the F-spin, and no matter how badly the super-multiplets

of the Eightfold W a y are broken, the vector current octet stdi applies to the current of the Fspin." Thus, it was through his consideration of weak currents that Gell-Mann was led to

an SU(3) algebra which applied to the strong interactions. In fact, this symmetry c m be
applied to both the vector current and the axial vector current individualiy, since the unitary

spins cornmute with each other, and the combined symmetry is then SU(~)XSU(~)."

In 1963, Nicola Cabibbo included the electromagnetic current in this symmetry. He

proposed that both the weak vector current and the electromagnetic current transform as part
of the same SU@) octet of vector currents jg,while the weak axial current transforms as part
of an octet of axial currents g? Cabibbo reasoned that the difference in strengths between the
A S = O and M=l currents could then be represented by a parameter 8, such that,40

J,-cos 0 ( jp"O+gts-o)+Sin8 (jt>so'tgis-L)

To determine 8, Cabibbo compared the r d t s of r - + p + u and

T'+~+V,

(7)

and he got tY=.257.

This angle relates the strengths of strangeness-consenhg to strangeness-changng weak decay

processes, and it suppresses the dS= 8-decay rates by tad8. Cabibbo's work also Mplied
that al1 1 &S'=ll @-processessais@ the d e 1 AT=% 1, and through the Gell-Mann Nishijima
relation? this gives the nile M/AQ=+l for &processes, which is in agreement with the resuit

of Feynman and Gell-Mann (1958):'

In 1964, Gell-Mann realized that he could obtain aU of the features of Cabibbo's
analysis of the weak interactions by constnrcting weak currents fiom fndamental entities
187

which he named quarks?

It occurred to Gell-Mann that if these new particles occurred in

octets, the underlying symmetry group would be SU(8) instead of SU(3). Since he wanted to
remain with the group SU(3), he decided to look for a group of particles corresponding to the
undamental representation of SU(3), namely, a triplet,
A unitary triplet t consists of an isotopic singlet s of electric charge z (in units of e)
and an isotopic doublet (u,d) with charges rtl and z respectively. The anti-triplet 7
has, of course, the opposite sign of the charges. Complete symmetry among the
members of the triplet gives the exact eigMoId way, while a mass Merence, for
example, between the isotopic doublet and singlet gives the first-order violatiod3

By assigning fiactional charges, ?h,-W, -% for u, d, and s respectively, dong with baryon
number %, Gell-Mann was able to build up baryons and mesons from the quarkxu Although
he used them in construction, however, Gell-Manndid not regard these quarks as physical

particles,

It is fun to speculate about the way quarks would behave if they were physical
particles of =te mass (instead of purely mathematid entities as they would be in the
Iimit of infinite mass). Since charge and baryon number are exactly consenred, one of
the quarks (presumably uH or d-%) would be absolutely stable... Ordinary matter near
the earth's surface wouid be contaminated by stable quarks as a r e d t of high energy
cosmic ray events throughout the earth's history, but the contamination is estimated to
be so small that it wodd never have been detected. A search for stable quarks-.would help to reassure us of the non-existence of reai quarks?
Although Gell-Mann deduced these fundamental particles fiom considerations of symmetry in
the context of curent dgebra, the quark concept rapidly proved to be have far-reaching

consequences.

2. SU(3) and quarks

Gell-Mann and Ne'eman were not the first not to introduce SU(3) into particle physics.

Back in 1956, Shoichi Sakata was looking for the meaning behind the GeU-Mann-Nishijima
188

rule?

Sakata drew a paraIlel with nuclear structure-just as nuclei are cornposed of neutrons

and protons, he thought that particles codd be assembled h m an assembly of basic

In our model, the new particles are considered to be composed of four kinds of
fndamental particles in the tme sense, that is, nucleon, antinucleon, A' and anti-A'. If
we assume that A" has such intrinsic propertes as were assigned by Nishijima and
Gell-Mann we can easily get their ...nile for the composite particies as the renilt of
the addition laws for the ordinary spin, the isotopic spin, and the ~trangeness-~'
Sakata's model therefore has six constitaents: the neutron, the proton, the A, and theh three

antiparticles. It is curous that although Sakata considers the pion as a combination of N and

s,he gives no credit to Fermi and Yang, who first had this idea in 1949"

Although Sakata

himself may not have realized that his work could be fhmed in tems of group theory, his
coileagues at the University of Nagoya did.
In 1959, Ikeda, Ogawa, and Ohnuki formulated Sakata's model in group-theoretical
They fomdated an SU(3) theory, in which the fiuidamental triplet consisted of the

neutron, proton, and hSo

Using this basis, together with another triplet consisting of the
anti-particles, particles were assigned to different representations of SU(3), but these
assignments were dinerent than those later chosen by Gell-Mann and Ne'eman. ALthough

Ikeda, Ogawa, and Ohnuki s~iccessfidiyplaced the three pions and four kaons in an
8-dimemional representation, experirnent soon showed that their baryon octet was in error.
The incorrect assignments of C and ican be blamed upon the fact that n, p, and A cannot
form a triplef because they possess different spins' Experiment nilcd in favour of Geil-

Mann and Ne'eman.

M e r considering Sakatafsmodel dong with a few review articles on SU(3) symmetry,

a postdoctord fellow at CERN named George Zweig independentiy amved at the idea that the

multiplet structure of hadrons couid be recovered if hadrons were composites of hdamental

parricles carrying appropriate quantum numbers. Zweig referred to these particles as aces,
and he suggested that they come in pairs or triplets? Unlike Gell-Mann, who had suggested
quarks in the context of current algebra, Zweig treated aces as physical constituents of
hadrons. Although there was initia1 resistance to such a seemingly crude approach, it soon
yielded excellent results?

A 1969 book on the quark mode1 summed up the attitude of the

physics community towards quarks,

Although it is not yet known whethr quarks exist as individual particles, it is
undeniable rhat the quark idea is not only one of the most fascinahg concepts in
particle physics, but has proved to be a very f i t f i i l working hypothesis. A great
variety of observations conceming strong, electromagnetic, and weak interactions can
be understood if we suppose that quarks are the basic constituents of al1 hadronic
matter..., Of course, the whole quark idea is ll-founded. So far quarks have escaped
detection.... The quark model should, therefore, at l e s t for the moment, not be taken
for more that what it is, namely, the tentative and simplistic expression of an as yet
obscure dynamics underlying the hadronic world?
Quarks can be interpreted as the fundamental representation of the global symmetry
group SU(3). Although there was not, and still is not, any evidence for fiee quarks, the quark
model is extremeiy usefid for explainhg the structure of hadrons. Instead of being viewed as
elementary particles, rnesons and baryons can be treated as states built up of these three
fundamental constituents. Following Gell-Mann, these quarks were presumed to corne in
three types, or jlm>ours: up, down, and strange. They are aU spin-% particles, but the up and

down quarks are in an isotopic spin doublet, while the strange quark is in a isotopic spin
singlet, although it aiso carries an eigenstate of a new quantum number caiied strangeness.

With these three types of quark, mesons can be treated as quark-antiquarkpairs

qq,while

baryons c m be treated as bound states of three quarks qqq. In this theory, a- is identified
with a d state, a proton is identified with a uud state, and a neutron is identified with a udd
state.

In the language of group theory, SU(3) offers the meson representations,

giving a singlet and an octet, and it aiso offers the baryon representations,
3x3~3=1+8+8+10

giving a sioglet, two octets, and a decuplet Additionally, the breakuig of the SU(3)

symmetry can be accommodated by postulathg a mass difference between the paired (u, d)
and the s quark.

In his second paper OF 1964, Gell-Mann presented an extension of the SU(3) group to
SU(6)?

He hoped that perhaps this group could be used as an approximate symmetry, to

arrange,

"...particles of different spins and panties in super-super-super-mdtip~ets."56Two

rnonths later, Grsey and Radicati pointed out that SU(6) could be viewed as an enlargement
of the SU(4) symmeetry which had been proposed by Wigner in 1937 in the realm of nuclear

physics,

... the group SU(4) introduced by Wigner to classi@ nuclear states can be extended to
the relativistic domain and it is, therefore, relevant for particle physics. We wili next
show that when strangeness is taken into account the group SU(4) becomes enlarged to
SU(@ which .., embodies SU(3) and the ordinary spin in the same way as Wigner's
SU(4) embodies isotopic spin and ordinary spin...''

Whereas Wigner had combined the symmetries of isotopic spin with spin to give

SU(2)xSU(2) within nuclear physics, the group SU(6) is relevant within the realm of the
strong interactions to the extent that the strong interactions are invariant under the unitary spin

group SU(3), dong with the ordinary spin group SU(2). Grsey and Radicati showed how

SU(6) offered a higher classification system for hadrons. Their papa included the meson
representations,
35=(8,3)+(8,l)+(i ,3)

SU(3)xSU(2)

which contains an octet of spin-zero mesons, and anouier octet of spin4 mesons, as expected.
It also offered the baryon representations,

56=C10*4)+(8-2)

SU(3)xSU(2)

which included the baryon octet with spin 112, and the baryon decuplet, with spin 312. This

was a clear advance over the pure SU(3) approach, because SU(3) cannot furnish any

relations between the various super-multiplets, but SU(6) canOs8

It was possible to do caIculations in SU(6) in abstract group theory without thinking in
tems of quarks, but the use of these odd objects aided understanding- Using quarks, the

fundamental six-dimensional representation is identined as (u?,u&,d,d&,.s?,s&) where the

arrows denote spin up or down."

Symbolically,
6=(3,2)

and the sk-dimensional representation contains an SU(3) triplet of spin doublets (which are
dl States of the same parity). This gives, for mesons,
6x6'=3 5+l

and for baryons,

6~6~6=20tS6+70+70
There were many efforts to find theories simultaneously invariant under SU(6) and the
Lorentz group, but none of them met with s u c c e ~ s . ~According
~
to Dyson in 1966, "...no
physicdly interesting marriage of the Lorentz group with intemal syrnmetries is possible, and

[sol the failure of the relativstic SU(6) thories was mathematicdly inevtabIee"6' SU@) Ied
to a few decent results, but the most important consequence of static SU(6), historicaliy, is
that it pointed the way to a new dynamitai degree of fieedom, now known as colour.

SU(6) could ody be applied in cases where orbital angular momentum was effectiveLy
neglected (no spin-orbit couplings), and this implied that the thtee-quarkwave hction was
symmetrc in orbital variabIes- In fact, in the 56-representation, chosen for baryons, the
wave-bction is t o t d y symmetrc in all variabies. This was in apparent conflict with Fermi

statistics (the exclusion principle), which had k e n well-established for over three decades.

To remedy this problem, Oscar Greenberg suggested, in 1964, that quarks do not obey Fermi
statistics, but rather, hey obey a parastatistics in which a single state can be occupied by

three particles.
... we retuni to the question of pfacing three spin-%quarks in S -tes [I=O] in the
baryon 56. This can be done ifthe quarks are pardennions of order p=3...?

Greenberg then gave the rules for the creation and annihilation operators for his t h e ~ r y . ~ ~
Parastatistics was outside of the usual fermion-boson dichotomy, and its field-theoreticai
formulation was alien to many physicists. Its obscurity was soon overcome, however, with
the aid of a more transparent, but essentiaily equivaient, formulation offered by Han and

Na~nbu.~~

In early 1965, Han and Nambu also propoxd a solution which solved the natistics
problem. (At the same time, it aliowed them to funiish quarks with integral charges, which
they preferred to fiactionai charges.) They suggested that there was not one triplet of quarks,
but three, and that these three triplets would manifes a double SU(3) symmetry,

Wih a view to avoiding some of the kinematicaI and dmcal

difficdties involved
in the single-triplet quark model, a mode1 for the low-lying baryons and mesons based
on three triplets with integral charges is proposed... A double SU(3) symmetry scheme
is proposed in which the large mass splinings between different representations are
ascribed to one of the SU(3), whde the other SU(3) is the u d one for the mass
splitings within a representation of the frst SU(^)."

Thus, they replaced each member of the fundamental triplet of SU(3) flavour with a triplet of
another SU(3) group of a new quantum number c. This SU(3), group came to be laiown as
SU(3) c01our.~ The quark colours provided an extra degree of fkeedom which could tum an

othenvse symmetrc wave-hction into a symmetrk one, thus s a t i m g the Pauli principle,
which only applies to completeIy identical particles.

In 1966, Greenberg and Zwanziger noted that the parastatistic model and the
tricoloured triplet rnodel are equivalent, but only if the three triplets carry the same charges,
that is, if there are three (u, d, s) sets each with the old charges (Ys,-%,

-1h).

Greenberg and

Zwanziger also discussed the sauration of paaicle states. Interquark forces seemed to show a
saturation property-they appeared only in the bound states

6 and qqq.

The colour

hypothesis gave a natural explanation of this condition which had previously been imposed by
fiat. Al1 observed states were colour-neutral, or colo~~rless.6~
No problems arose in

assigning coloured quarks the charges which had been initially given to them by Gell-Mann
and Zweig, and in fact, when the idea of coloured quarks nnally came into vogue in the

1970s within the context of gauge theory, it was as fiactionally charged objects.

3. Spontaneous qmmetry breakhg and the Higgs mechanism (1960-67)

Gauge theory had fden upon hard tunes because of the zero mass-problem. if the
gauge bosons in Yang-Mills theory are massless, they cannot explain the short range of the

194

nuc1ea.r interactions, whiIe if they are massive, they niin the gauge invariance of the
Lagrangian. The answer to this problem came fiom an unexpected source. Although most of
Yoichiro Nambu's work was in high energy physics, he was also interested in solid state
physics. In 196 1, he published a paper together with a post-doctoral feiiow, Jona-Lasinio,
entitled, "A dynamical mode1 of elemeatary particles based upon an analogy with

superconductivity"o" In the Meissner effect of superconductivity, the magnetic field is

required to have a very short range without violating the gauge invariance of Maxwell's
eq~ations.~'Nambu realized that the Cooper pair current in superconductivity must violate
gauge invariance because of the coherence of the phase of the wave h c t i o n , but that the

hctional dependence of the phase is independent of any gauge fields. AIthough the

superconducting

does not exhibit gauge invariance, the Lagrangian can be gauge

invariant, although the gauge invariance is hidden-'O This Ied Nambu to the conclusion that
the Lagrangian of a quantum field theory cari possess an exact symmetry, even though that

symrnetry is not manifest in the physical states which that theory describes. In particular,
even though a Lagrangian may possess a certain symmetry, the ground or vacuum state does

no? have to be invariant under that symmetry.

This concept can be illustrated with a simple example. Consider a thi rod placed
verticdly on a table, and then pushed down with a ce&

force?' If the force exceeds a

critical value, the rod bends, in a certain direction, more or less at random. Note that the
unbent configuration is completely symmetric, but the bent state is not. In facf there are

inflinitely many possible new (degenerate) ground states, which are related by a rotational
symmetry, but the rod only chooses one of them!

The salient points here are that a

parameter, in this case, the force F, assumes a critical value, and beyond that value, the
symmetric configuration becomes unstable, and so the ground States becorne degenerate.

Jefiey Goldstone pointed out a problem with this concept in 1961. He found that the

breakdown of a continuous symmetry group would necessady entail. the existence of a

rnassless spin-zero particle,

Whenever the Lagrangian has a continuous symmetry group, the new solutions have a
reduced symmetry and contain massless bosons. One consequence is that this kind of
theory cannot be applied to a vector partide without losing Lorentz invariance. A
method of losing symmetry is, of course, highly desirable in eIementary pacticle theory
but these theories wiil not do this without introducing non-existent masdess
bosons-..72

This result was derived more rigorously by Goldstone, Salam, and ~einberg." They proved
that this symmetry breakdown must be accompanied by the appearance of massless, spin-zero
particles, as physical states of the theory. These particles became known as Goldstone

bosons.
Goldstone bosons led to a parad& however, because the inspiration for this symmetry
breakdown had corne nom superconductivity, in which there are no massless particles. In
fact, as P. W. Anderson pointed out in 1963, the gauge particles in superconductivity, the

plasmons, act as if they are massive." This is because the plasmons can have both
transverse and longitudinal polarizations, but below a certain cutoff energy, the longitudinal
plasmon is indistinguishable from a massive vector boson. Anderson reasoned that in a

sirnilar manner, Gotdstone bosons could be converted into massive particles by interaction
with the gauge field?

Furthemore, he referenced a 1962 paper of Schwinger, which had

argued that a Yang-Mills vector boson, impiied by the association of a generdized gauge

transformation with a conservation law, would not necessarily have zero m a s . These papers

inspired other theorists to show how symmetry breakdown using spin-zero fields could
generate vector-meson masses, particularly in the case of Yang--Mills theones. The frst to

achieve this was Peter Higgs?

In a series of three papers in 1964-66, Higgs introduced his mechanism of sponmeous

symrnehy breakng (SSB)."

This mechanism was then extended to the non-Abelian case by

T. W. ~ i b b l e ? Higgs showed that when a local gauge symmetry, such as electromagnetic

gauge invariance, is broken, then although Goldstone bosons are produced, a clever choice of
gauge transformation ensures that they do not appear as physical particles! Instead, they

appear a s zero helicity states of the vector gauge particles, which thereby*acquire a mas,

When the symmetry group of the Lagrangian is extended fiom global to local U(l)
transformations by the introduction of coupling with a vector gauge field, the
Goldstone boson becomes the longitudinal state of a massive vector boson whose
transverse states are the quanta of the transverse gauge field"
Higgs' mode1 conssts of the standard QED Lagrangian, augmented by a pair of scalar fields,
later called Higgs fields, which are coupled to the photon and to one another in such a way
that gauge invariance is preserved. The scalars obey a potential energy fnction which allow
them to break gauge symmetry by playing the role of a degenerate ground state."

Higgs

found that by giving the scalar fields a negative mass term in the Lagrangian, then instead of

yieldng a massless photon and two negative-mass scalar particles, the physical spectrum of
the theory contained a massive photon and a single massive d a .particle, later referred to as
a Higgs particle. Although the mechanism is ingenious, spontaneous symmetry breaking is
mt pite

a miracle-the mass term for the Higgs particle is contained in the kinetic energy of

the Higgs ground state fiom the beginning, and it is simply hidden."

4. Electroweak unification (1 967-68)

In 1967-68, Steven Weinberg and Abdus Salam each made a breakthrough in

elec&oweak theory. Mthough Glashow in 1961, followed by Salam and Ward in 1964, had
already presented gauge theories of the electromagnetic and weak interactions, they had run
into trouble with the zero-mass problem of the Yang-Mills field- This had forced them to

insert the masses of the IVBs into the Lagrangian by hand, thus ruining the gauge invariance

of their theories. The success of spontaneous symmetry breaking, however, made it possible
for Weinberg in 1967, and independently, Salam in 1968, to replace the IVB mass terms with

masses generated by the Higgs mechanism- This aiIowed the vector mesons to have mass,
while preserving gauge invariance.

In this treatment, weak interactions can be viewed as being mediated by gauge bosons
which are massless before symmetry breakhg. The Lagrangian for the theory ais0 contains

tenns for rnassless electrons, muons, and neutrinos, and it is invariant under an intemal
syrnmetry group, which is a gauge symmetry. A scaiar field (the Higgs field) is then

introduced with a non-vanishing vaculmn expectation value. The resulting spontaneous

breakdown of symmetry gives masses to e and p and to the gauge bosons, but not to the
photon and neutrino.s- It therefore matches the phenomenology quite well, and it has met
with a good degree of success in describing weak interactions.

Weinberg had been working upon broken symmetry since he first heard of the 1961
Nambu and Lasinio paper in the mid-si~ties.8~This paper, aside fkom pointing out the
analogy with superconductivity, had given an interesting interpretation of the pion, treating it
as arising fom chirality invariance,

We consider a simpiified mode1 of nonlinear four-fermion interaction which d o w s a

y,-gauge group. An interesthg consequence of the symmetry is that there arise[s]
automatically [a] pseudoscalar zero-mass bound state of nucleon-antinucleon pairs

which may be regarded as an ideaIized pion."

In 1964, Adler and Weisberger each derived sum d e s which gave the ratio g
&

of axial

vector to vector coupiing constants in B-decay in terms of pion-nucleon cross-sections.'*

From the point of view of curent algebra, these d e s codd be regarded as a complete set of
hadronic states inserted in the commutation relations of the axial vector currents, but

Weinberg decided to interpret them dsfferently. He saw them as a consequence of the strong

interactions showing an approximate symmetry, based on the group SU(2)xSU(2), which was
spontaneously broken, giving rise to the nucleon masses?
Aithough the SU(2)xSU(2) symmeetxy is spontaneously broken, it still has a great deai
of predictive power. These predictions take the fom of approximate formulas, which give the

mark elements for low energy pion processes. in these cdculations, one is redy using not
only the fact that the strong interactions have a spontaneously broken approximate

SU(2)xSU(2) symmetry, but aiso that the currents of this symmetry group are, up to an
overall constant, to be identified with the vector and axial vector currents of 8-decay." In
1967, Weinberg thought of extending this broken SU(2)xSU(2) symmetry of the strong

interactions fiom a global symmetry to a local symmetry- He hoped that strong interactions
wodd then be descnbed by something like a Yang-Mills theory, but in addition to the vector
p

mesons predicted by Sakurai, he predicted that there would also be axial vector A l

rnesons.'* To give the p meson a mas, he needed to insert a common p and A l mass term
in the Lagrangian, and then through a spontaneous breakdown of the SU(2)xSU(2) symmetry,

he could split the p and A I masses. Since the theory was not gauge invariant, however, the

pions remained physical Goldstone bosons, and Weinberg could not renormalize itg9

In the fall of 1967, Weinberg reaIized that he had been applying his ideas to the wrong
problem. It is not the p which is massless-it is the photon! And its partner is not the Al,
but the set of massive NBs, the proposed mediaors of the weak interaction. Weinberg
understood, W y , that weak and electromagnetic interactions can be described in terms of an
exact but spontaneously broken gauge symmetry. At the tirne, however, Weinberg admits that
he had little confidence in his understanding of the strong interaction, so he concentrated on
ieptons only?O
In 1967, he presented his paper, "A mode1 of leptons". He reasoned that there are two
left-handed electron-type Leptons (e, and

VAand one right handed e,

so he used the group

U(2)xU(1). He postulated that ail unitary 2x2 matrices wodd operate on the left-handed
lepton doublet, and the 1x1 matrices wodd operate on the Bght-handed singlet,"

This group could be reduced, however, because U(2) breaks up into unimodular
transformations and phase tran&ormations, giving SU(2)xU(l)xU(I), and since one of the

U(1) symmetries can be idenfined with lepton number which is conserved, Weinberg decided
~ left the four-parameter group SU(2)xU(l).
to exclude it from the ~ o u p ?This
Weinberg constnicted his Lagrangian out of the lefi-handed doublet and the righthanded singlet, plus the gauge fields A, and B, which couple to an SU(2) group of weak

isospin T,and a U(1) group of weak hypercharge Y, plus a spin zero doublet,g3

This Higgs doublet has a vacuum expectatioa value which breaks T and Y,thus giving mass

to the electron, and to the weak vector bosons. M e r spontaneous symmetry breakdown
200

SU(2)xU(I) to the U(1) of ordinary electromagnetic gauge invariance, three of the four vector
bosons, the two charged bosons

F and the neutrai boson 2,ac@e mas, whiie the fourth

boson, the photon, remains massless. AU four of these fields, however, are mixtures of the A,
and B, fields. The massive fields

FF and 2" are given by,

while the massless photon is given by,

(1 1)

Note the presence of the two coupling constants, g and g', whkh combine to give the two
physical coupling constants, e and Gw,which are related to the boson masses,

where MW is the m a s of the W*,which is related to the mass of the 2 as follows,

Saiam achieved similar redts, although he included muons in his theory, In addition, Salam
related the h

g of the gauge bosons not with the two coupling constants, but with an

angle?4 Weinberg soon adopted this idea hrmself, defining this mixing angle by tan&g'/g,

thus making the fomaiism tidier?'

The Weinberg-Salam (W-S) theory makes an unequivocal prediction concerning the

coupling of the neutral boson 2. Neutrd currents had already been predicted by Bludman
(1X8), by Glashow (1961), and by Saiam a d Ward (1964), but none of these previous

theories, however, had offered a definite prediction of the strength of the neutral currents.%
The theones of Weinberg anci Salam, however, included a prediction for the mass of the 2,
which le4 in tum, to a d e f i t e prediction of the strength of the neutral currentg7 Late in
201

1971, Weinberg c-d

processes?

out a study of the effects that the Z should have on semileptonic

He predicted that the Z couid show observable effects in neutrino-hadron

scattering, but he had difnculty with the predictions involving strange particles,

... the data on strangeness-consenlng neutral current interactions are not yet good
enough to d e out the existence of such currents. In contrast, the upper limits on
strangeness non-conserving processes such as lf'-+Cct+p-,
X$_+~~++V+T
[and so on] are
very stringent, and show that no strangeneu-nonconservhg neutml current can have
any appreciable coupling to leptons. Thus some way must be found to introduce the
strangeness-changing charged currents, without ntroducing any strangeness-changing
neutraI current?

A solution to this problem had aIready been suggested in 1970, by Glashow,

IIiopoulos, and Maiani. Deep inelastic scattering experiments in 1969 had suggested that
quarks were point-like entities, dowing theorsts to incorporate hadrons into the W-S model
by appIying the model to quarks as weii as to l e p t ~ n s . ' ~
Glashow, Iliopoulos, and Maiani

showed that strangeness-changing neutral currents could be eiiminated by the introduction of a

fourth quark,

We wish to propose a simple model in which the divergences are properly ordered.
Our model is founded in a quark model, but one involving four, not three, fundamental
fermiom... The extra quark is the simplest modification of the usual model leading to
the proper ordering of divergences.... In contradistinction to the conventional (threequark) model, the coupling of the neutd-intennediary-now hypercharge conservingcauses no embarrasment-'O'

The fourth quark was nameci c h , &er a 1964 paper by Bjerken and Glashow, who had
suggested a fourth quantum number chmm as part of their proposed extension of the

Eightfold Way fkom SU(3) to SU(^).'" Although no particles containhg charm were
known in 1970, the idea of a charmed quark was appealing to Glashow, Iliopoulos, and

Maiani not only because it fked the strangeness-changing curent, but also because it burnped
up the number of quarks to four, and at the tirne, four leptons were hown, e,p,v,,v,.

202

This

theory was politeiy ignored, however, by the majority of the physics community, as oniy a
small group of theorists were interested in the K-decay an~maly.'~~
There was not much

interest in unified theories at all, in fact, because there was no proof of renormalizability, but
that would soon change.IM

5. Renormniization of gauge theories (1971)

Both Weinberg and Salam hoped that their theory was renormaIizable, but neither o f
them codd prove it. The Feynman d e s for Yang-MilIs theories had been worked out by
Feynman (1963), Faddeev and Popov (1967), and Taylor (L971)among others, who had

s h o w that unbroken gauge theories are renomalizable, but this proof held only if the gauge
pa&cIes were massless. There was no guarantee that renormalizability was not spoiled by

Richard Feynman pioneered calculation techniques in massive Yang-Mills fields. In

1961, he had begun work on a quantum theory of gravitation, but he immediately found out
that the simplest calculations in quantum gravity led to Long, extremely complicated

e~pre-~~ons.'"
Gell-Mannsuggested to Feynman that he try his slcls first on Yang-Mills
theory, since technically it was much easier, while it is aIso a non-linear theory, like gravity,
so that its gauge invariance resembles general coordinate invariance. Feynman did just

thaf

... the Yang-Mills theory is enormously easier to cornpute with than the gravity theory,
and therefore 1 continued most of my investigations on the Yang-MiUs theory with the
idea, if 1 ever cure that one, I'Ll nirn around and cure the other.... the Yang-MiIis case
took me about a day; to calculate the diagram in the case of gravitation 1 tried again
and again and was never able to do it..."'

Feynman's method involved the use of ghost-fields, which are fictitious scalar particles which

203

appear in closed loops in the Feynman diagrams, but which do not appear as physicai
particles. In 1967, Faddeev and Popov extended these rents fiom single-Ioop calculations to
the case of arbitrary diagrams involving Yang-MillsfeId~.'~*

In 1966, Martinus Veltman had presented a paper on the divergences of vector and
axial-vector hadronic current~.'~~
The paper showed that these divergences wuid be
expressed as products of the currents with vector fields representing the photon and the IVBs

of the weak interaction. At a conference tbat year, Veltman ran into Feynman, who explained
to

him that his equations were of the Yang-Mills type.IIO Veltman decided to investigate

the possibility of renomalkation of massive Yang-MiIIs theory, in which particles were

inserted by hand, since he figured that the pure, gauge-invariant theory with massless particles
was unrealistic. After a few years of hard wo& Veltman showed that at the two-loop level,

there were umenormalizable divergences.in massive gauge theory."' At this point, it

appeared as if Veltman's program was doomed, but the difference between the massive and
massfess Yang-WlIs theones was still unclarfed at the tirne. A few mon& later, however,
Veltrnan resolved this difference, with the help of a visiting schoIar,
Actualiy the problem is quite simple.

The zero-mass case is simply not the Iimiting

case of the f i t e mass theory, and there is a discrete ciiffierence behveen the theory
with zero-mas and a theory with h i t e mas, no matter how s m d as compared to aLi
extemai momenta The reason is that a finite mass spin4 particle has three dinerent
states of poiarktion while a zero-mass particle has only two such states (with
helicities kl).'l2
Veltman discovered that the extra degree of freedom associated with the spin of a massive
vector particle was responsible for niining the renormalizability. He soon began to e n t e 6
the idea that scalar fields could be introduced into the Yang-Mills Lagrangian in such a way

as to cancel the two-loop divergences, and in 1971, the problem was finally solved by one of
204

his graduate students, Gerard 't HooR

In the summer of 1970, 't Hooft had attended a m e r school in Corsica where he
leamed about the o-model."'

This was a simple Lagrangian field theory used to study

spontaneous symmetry breaking. In if protons and neutrons acquired masses through a

symrnetry breakdown provided by a-particles flIng the vacuum, while the pions acted as

Goldstone bosons. At m e of the seminars, 't Hoofi leamed that tbis theory couid be
renormakized without spoiling SSB. He asked the presenters, Lee and Symannk, if the resuIts
could be applied to Yang-Mills fields, but they both told him the same thing, to ask his
tacher, Veltman. For his Ph.D. under Veltman, 't Hooft decided to work on the
renormalization of rnassless gauge theory. Adopting many of Veltmads techniques, 't Hoofi
was able to devise a regulator method which allowed hn to prove the renormalizabilitj. of

massless Yang-Miils fields.'"

't

In his method, gauge invanance was absolutely essential, and

Hooft realized that adding masses by hand would not preserve the delicate cancellations

necessary in the proof, but giving masses to gauge bosons by spontaneous symmetry breaking
mi&!

Five rnonths later, 't Hoofi presented his second paper, in which he proved the

renormalizability of massive gauge fields."'

Veltman announced the results in 1971, but many physicists were not convinced by
't Hooft's work, because they were not f d a r with the path integral formalism on which his

work was based?

They wanted to see the proof, instead, within the formalism of

canonical quantization. This was soon supplie& however, in a series of papers by Benjamin
Lee and Zinn-~ustin.'" Backed by Lee's authority, dong with the more conventional
formaism, theoreticai physicists soon fell in line with the view that gauge theones in which

NBs gained masses were renormaIkab1e. According to Weinberg,

1 have to admit that when 1 f k t saw 't Hooft3 papa in 1971, 1 was not convinced
that he had found the way to prove renormaluability. The trouble was not with 't
Hooft but with me: 1 was simply not familiar enough with the path integral formalsm
on which 't Hooft's work was based, and 1 wanted to see a derivation of the Feynman
d e s in 't Hooft's gauge fiom canonid quatltization.... after Lee's paper 1 was ready

to regard the renormalizability of the unifred theory as essentidy proved-"'

Thus, it became generally accepted that the weak and electromagmtic interactions are
governed by some group of exact local syrnmetries, and that this group is spontaneousIy

broken to U(1), m

g mass to

all the vector bosons except the photon, and the theory is

renormalizable. Even so, it was not yet clear that the Weinberg-Salam model was adequate
describe Nature. That was a matter to be detenmined by experiment.

6. Experiment and the new physics (1971-)

Although the search for neutral cunents had been a low priority at both CERN and
F e d a b , the renormalizability proof of the Weinberg-Salam theory raised interest

considerably. Experimenters placed new emphasis upon neutrino experiments, and they soon
got results. Neutrai currents of the correct form and magnitude as predicted by the W-S
model were found at the Gargamelle bubble chamber at CERN in 1973, and in a counter
experiment at Fennilab in 1974.'19 These were difflcdt experiments to perform, however,
and so they faced dispute initialIy.'20 Neutrino experiments face amajor problem with
neutron background, since both neutrinos and neutrons are electrically neutral, and so neither
leave any tracks. This makes it hard to distinguish between actual neutral current events, and
background events involving secondary neutrons generated by the neutrinos outside the active
chamber. Very impressive evidence came nom a different source in 1978, however, which

settled the issue. in an experiment at SLAC involving the scattering of longitudinally

polarized electrons, the interference between an electromagnetic amplitude and a neutral weak
current was measured."'

This experiment not only demonstrated neutral currents, but it

also allowed the mDang angle to be calcuiated. The results conkned the Weinberg-Salam
theory.

'"
The success of gauge theory also extended to the strong interactions, although in a

different fom. In 1973, Hugh Politzer, and independently, Gross and WiIczek discovered a

remarkable property of the Yang-Miils fields which came to be known as asymptotic fieedom:

as the energy of a process goes to inf?nity, the effective coupling constant goes to zero?

This was exciting, as it could explain scaling, which had been confirmed by deep inelastic
~cattering."~At the same time, however, it precluded the use o f the Higgs mechanisrn,
because the presence of any strongly interacing scdar particles in the theory would destroy

asymptotic freedom. Gross and Wilczek suggested an unbroken gauge symmetry as a

possibility,
... one can constnict many interesting models of the strong interactions. One
particulariy appealing model is based on three triplets of fermions, with Gell-Mann's
SU(3)xSU(3) as global symmetry and an SU(3) "colour" gauge group to provide
strong interactions. That is, the generators of the strong interaction gauge group
cornmute with ordinary SU(3)xSU(3) currents and mix quarks with the same isospin
and hypercharge but different " c o l o ~ r " . ' ~
A month iater, Weinberg had the same ideaIZ6 Since the gauge symmetry is unbroken, the
gauge particles, a group of eight gluons, are massless, but the increase of the strong force

with distance can be relied upon to explain why quarks as weli as the massless gluons are not

seen in the laboratory-12' This property came to be known as confinement The theory of
quantum chromodynamics (QCD) was buiIt upon the foundation of an exact SU(3) group of

quark colour, and once again, the constraints of gauge invariance and renormalizability guided
the discovery of a Nitable Lagrangian, one which ensured the conservation of strangeness,

charge conjugation, and parit~.'~'

Ml three fundamental interactions were now represented by local gauge groups, but
already in late 1973, theorists were already looking for M e r unification. Pati and Salam,
and soon d e r , Georgi and Glashow, each attempted to nd a single unifying gauge group

which could represent all of the fiindamental interactions using an extended group
s m i c t ~ u e . ' Each
~ ~ of these two models assigned quarks and leptons to a single group, which
after spontaneous symmetry breaking, broke down to a product of the SU(2)xU(I) of the
electroweak interaction, plus the SU(3) of the strong interaction-"* Georgi and Glashow
explained that this has the advantage of predictng a single coupling constant7
... we see how attractive it is for strong, we& and electromagnetic interactions to
spring fiom a gauge theory based on the group F=SU(3)xSU(2)xU(l). Alas, this
theory is defective in one important respect: It does not trdy un* weak and
electromagnetic interactions. The SU(Z)xU(l) gauge coupling describe two
interactions with two independent coupling constants; a true unif5cation would involve
o d y one.'"

Although Pati and SaIam favoured SU(4)xSU(4), and Georgi and Glashow favoured SU(5),
there are many candidates for a unified gauge group. Any group is eligible as long as it

fulfils several mathematical requirements, the most obvious requirements k i n g that it has to

contain the gauge symmetry groups SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1), and it has to allow for the correct
reproduction of the particle content of the observed fermion ~pectnim."~
The interestkg part of ail this, of course, is not the agreement with old results, but the
new physics that a single uniQing group would predict! What new, perhaps hitherto
forbidden transitions are possible under the new symmetry group? What new kinds of

particles shouid experirnentalists be on the lookout for? Most grand unified theories share a
spectacular feature: they predict proton decay. The fist to predict this were Pati and Salam,

It is part of general belief in particle physics that conservation is an absolute Law of

nature- Such a notion is but naturai when one considers the extraordinary stability of
the lightest known baryon, the proton, with a lifetime n excess of 103' sec- In this
note, we wish to question whether this apparent stabilify t d y reflects the conservation
of baryon number..-.

'"

Proton decay soon became a hallmark of unified theones- Aithough technically, it is possible
to construct unified theones in which baryons are absolutely stable, it is doubtEl that such a

theory would exist- If it did, it would look awkward because it would require a seemhgly
artincial arrangement of both local and global symrnetries, such that in the symmetry limit,
the baryon number for known matter would result In Pati and Salam's theory, for instance,
instead of baryon number and Iepton number being individually conserved,

(B+L) is conserved.'"

O&

their sum

This d o w s the protons to decay into leptons.

The SU(5) group of Georgi and Glashow is a particdarly elegant example. This
group includes the regular leptons and quarks, and in addition, it predicts new, superheavy

coIoured vector bosons which can mediate lepton-quark transitions, making decays such as
p+?rO+e+ not only possible, but possibly accessible.

In August of 1974, Georgi, Quinn, and

Weinberg used the group SU(5) to predict a proton lifetime of 6x10" years."'

A few

months earlier, Reines and Crouch had published a lower limit of 2x10~' years using a
scintillation detector developed for neutrino se arche^.'^^ This made theorists optimistic that
proton decay might be observed at this order of magnitude.
Experimentalists soon began sexching for proton decay deep underground, in mines
originally outftted for neutrino searches. By the mid-1980s, there was a whole series of these

experiments in ~peration.'~'None of the experments, however, yielded any proton decay

events which could be separated fiom the background. In fact, in 1983, the minimal group

SU(5) was conclusively d e d out by experimentL3' Although theorists mahtained hope for
proton decay, and they extended their efforts to other symmetries like S0(10), experimental

interest in the topic eventually waned. Many of the proton decay experiments were
themselves pirated, and wound up again as neutrino detectors. Whether or not evidence might
be found for proton decay in the future, the lifetime of the proton is certady Iong enough

that the conservation of baryon number remains a useful d e + 1 3 9

7. The 1979 Nobel prize

In 1979, the Nobel prize was awarded to Sheldon Glashow, Abdus Salam, and Steven
Weinberg. Glashow had showed how to

uaifv electromagnetic and weak interactions in

1961,

and six years later, Salam and Weinberg had shown how to generate the masses of the gauge
particles through spontaneous symmetry breaking- As we have seen, the electroweak theory
then laid dormant for a few years, untiI 't Hooft proved its renormali~ability.~~~
In the

words of Sidney Coleman in 1979,

Rarely has so great an accomplishment been so widely ignored.... Gerard 't Hooft
wrote a paper on the renormalization of gauge theories that revealed Weinberg and
Salam's frog to be an enchanted prince.'*'
Although efforts at higher udication have not succeeded, as yet, the electroweak theory has
held up under experimental scrutiny. Even more importantly, however, the Weinberg-Salam

theory has provided a fiamework for future endeavour- Since its inception, the theory has

been able to incorporate al1 new resuits, and discoveries, including evidence of the c quark in

1974, and evidence of the b quark in 1977.'"

The WeinbergSalam mode1 was so

successfi that it becarne known as the Standard Model of electroweak interactions. Today,
together with quantum chromodynamics, it is referred to simply the Standard Model, and
although this theory is far from the final word on the subject, it rem&

a powerful and far-

reachhg theory based on just a single general principle, the principle of local gauge

invariance.

8. Concluding remarks

Although Yang and Mills had developed their non-Abelian gauge theory in an effort to
describe the strong interaction, it was so appealing that many theorists tried to apply it to the
weak interaction as weli. Aithough it was tempting to i d e n a

the Yang-Miils vector particles

with intermediate vector bosons in the V-A theory, the masses of the particles spoiled the

gauge invariance of the Lagrangian. Schwinger attempted to place charged, weak IVBs in an

isotopic ple et dong with the photon Bludman, d e a d , ignored the electromagnetic photon,
and he attempted to place a neutral IVB in the triplet Glashow then combined the IVB

isotopic triplet and the photon into a unified SU(2)xU(l) theory, but like his predecessors he
had no a m e r to the zero-mass problem. Sakurai ignored this problem altogether, and he

identined the gauge vector bosons as the mediators of the strong interaction, and although he
predicted the properties of three physical vector mesons which were soon discovered, they
tunied out not to be gauge bosons at dl.
As more and more particles were discovered, theorists looked for a global symmetry

which couid organze them. The SU(2) isospin group is also a global symmetry, and it

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212

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UMI

the baryon octet to the decuplet, it had a problem, in that the baryon super-super-multiplet

seemed to be in violation of Pauli's exclusion principle. To sidestep this dilemma, Greenberg

suggested that quarks obey parastatistics while Han and Nambu suggested a double SU(3)
symmetry, in which each quark could be viewed as a triplet Both of these ideas, it tumed
out, were equivalent to the concept of quarks coming in three different coiours.
Although global symmetry tumed out to be very suc ces^, theorists were still
plugging away with local gauge symmeny. M e r stniggling *th the zero-mass problem for
years, the solution came fkom an unexpected source, superconductivity. The idea of
spontaneous symmetry breakdown, coupled with the Higgs mechanism, was just what was

needed to give the Yang-Mills gauge particles m a s to ensure the short range of the weak
interaction, while preseming gauge invariance. The electroweak unincation SU(2)xU(1) of
Glashow breathed new life in the hands of SaIam and Weinberg, who generated the mass of
the WZ and 2' bosons using the Higgs mechanism, while keeping the photon massless. A few

years later, 't Hooft showed that the theory was renormalizable. At long last, Yang-Mills

gauge theories codd have massive bosons while preserving gauge invariance! h e strong
interaction also proved to be amenable to gauge theory, but it did not need spontaneous

symmetry breaking. It was treated instead with an unbroken symmetry, so its eight gauge
particles are massless.

The appropriate group for the strong interactions turned out to be not

the broken symmetry of SU@), but the exact symmetry group of SU(3) colour. Ail three of
the fundamental particles are now associated with a gauge group, and efforts continue to find

higher symmetries. Consequently, the language of group theory has become unavoidable
within theoretical particle physics, at Ieast for the present.

-_

Although there is no guarantee that group theory will continue to be centrai to

theoreticai particle physics, it is difficdt, at the moment. to envision what high energy physics
wouid look Iike without it. Today, global m e t r i e s of SU(2) isopin and SU(3) colour
remah usefbl for the classification and o r g d t i o n of particle families, and at the same tirne,
local gauge symmetry provides a powerfl unifying structure for the electromagnetic, weak,
and strong interactions. Aside fiom its obvious aesthetic appeal, the principle of local gauge
invariance has aIlowed the appkation of the Feynman caicuius to the weak and strong

interactions. In this respect, symmetry is the glue that holds the Standard Mode1 together.

Of course, there is much work yet to be done- The Standard Mode1 is far from
complete, as it Ieaves many questions unanswered. Why, for instance, do quarks and leptons

corne in three different generations, ;nth different masses? Why do the electromagnetic and

weak interactions have separate coupling constants, instead of a single constant? How are
these forces related to the strong interaction? Why does gravity appear to be so diffierent?
Why are there more than twenq parameters in the Standard Mode1 that need to be
experimenlally determined? Why isn't there just a single constant? Although symmetry may

not prove to be the key to answering these questions, it W, at least, continue to provide a
context in which they may be asked.

1.

Schwinger (19571, Bludman (1958). Glashow (1959). Salam and

W a r d (1959)-

2Unitarity is a constraint upon the S-matrix of interaction.

The S-matrix is a collection Sm amplitudes m m , where n represents
the particles in a free state, long befoxe interaction, and m
repr&ents a free state, long after interaction. Unitarity is the
restriction that the sum of probabilities be unity,

or equivalently,
that is, S is unitary- See Pais (19861, p. 498.
3Schwinger (1957), p. 424 T h e symmetry that exits between
the heavy bosons and fermions in their isotopic space properties
prompts us to ask: 1s there also a family of bosons that realizes
the T=l representation of the three-dimensional rotation group?

exceptional position of the electromagnetic field in our

scherne, and the formal suggestion that this field is the third
componenc of a three-dimensi o n a l isotopic vector , encourage an
affirmative a n s w e r - We are thus led to the concept of a spin-1
family of bosons, comprising the massless, xieutral photon, and a
pair of electrically charged particles t h a t presumably c a r r y
mass . . - " . Schwinger is using the rotation group 0 ( 3 ) instead of
SU ( 2 ) , but the two groups have a similar mathematical structure.
There is a 2 to 1 mapping of the elements of SU(2) ont0 O ( 3 ) The

4.

Bludman (l958),p. 437.

Bludman writes, "We incorporate the three charge operators,

T-, 7-,
7 3
into our symmetry transformations instead of assuming
directly the charge-exchange character of the interaction-" [Bludman
(19581, p. 4 4 2 . 1
5.

6.
Glashow (1961) p. 583. The S stands for strangeness, since
this neutral boson is responsible for a strangeness-changing
neutral current. Glashow did not refer to Bludman for this idea,
but he did refer to a private communication with Gell-Mann.

7.

Glashow (1961), p. 584.

For Glashow, this mass -splitting is responsible for the

suppression of non-leptonic decay modes, which depend upon a factor

8.

( M A )4 .
9.

Sakurai (19601, p - 9.

10.
Hypercharge is equal to S for mesons, and S+i for baryonsSpecif ically, Y=S+B. [Geli-Marin and Nereman (1964) pp. 7-8 - ]
11. Gauge symmetry of baryon number was first considered by Lee
and Yang (1955).

12-

Sakurai (1960), p, 9 -

13.

Sakurai (l96O), pp- 12-13,

14 -

The

Chapter 6 15.
6

and w

discoveries were discussed at the end of

Gell-Mann and Glashow '1961), p -

438-

Glashow and Gell-Mann (1961), p. 460-

17-

Glashow and Gell-Mann (1961), p . 437.

18.

Glashow and Gell-Marin (1961;, p - 450 -

19-

Gell-Mann (1961), Nere m a n (1961)-

In 1962, the term hadron was adopted as the collective name

for the strongly interacting particles:
the baryons and the
rnesons. [Pais (1986), p 5501
20.

21. Note that in general, there is another form of coupling,

besides the F-coupling, which Gel1 -Mann calls t h e D-coupling Whereas the F matrices are imaginary and antisymmetric, the D
matrices are real and symmetric. [Gell-Mann (1961), pp . 31-32]
22.

Gell-Mann 6

, p

36 -

23.
Gell-Mann was so pleaed with his theory, that he gave it a
name which alludes to the Eightfold Path to Nirvana in Buddhism.
This consists of right belief, right resolve, right speech, right
conduct , right living, right effort, right contemplation, and right
ecstasy. See Capra (19831, Chapter 6 24.

Gell-Mann (1961),p. 1 5 -

25.

Gell-Mann (1961), p - 12.

Gell-Mann (1961), p . 15. Of course, the N doublet consists of

the proton and the neutron.

26.
27

Gell-Mann (1961), p - 16 -

28.
These pseudovector mesons were referred to as V, X, 2, and
by Nereman.

29. Gell-Mann (1961), p . 3 2 - Note t h a t the sum rule f o l i o w s

exclusively from the transformation properties of the symmetry
breakin9 under S U ( 3 ) , and it is independent from whatever may be
the dynamical origins of that breaking.
30.

Okubo (1962), p - 959.

The mesons, however, actually belong to two nine-member

families, nonets- There is no nine-dimensional representation of
S U ( 3 ) , but the existence of the nonets is explained by the quantummechanical concept of mixing- Mixing cornes about because SU (3) is
not an exact symmetry, and therefore the singlet state with zero
i s o s p i n and hypercharge can mix with the octet member sharing these
same values. In the pseudoscalar nonet, no and
mix w i t h q
and
in the pseudovector octet, w and p rnix with #.
31.

32Pickering (19841, p. 60. 7 9 Nereman was also at the

conference, and he intended to announce the same prediction, but
Gell-Mann spoke first, and took the opportunity to name the Q--

34.
For a couple of years, there had been a problem, but it was
resolved earlier, in 1963, Early experiments had indicated that
the A and Z baryons had opposite parity, making the SU(3)
assignment of the two particles to the same state impossible, but
Courant et al (1963) showed, however, that the h and C did have
the s a m e parity35.

Gell-Mann (19611, p - 1 -

37,
Gell-Mann (1964b), p - 64.
T h e same idea is presented,
although not as clearly explained, in Gell-Mann (1962)-

38.

Gell-Mann (l964b), p. 6 4 .

Gell-Mann (1962), p. 1076. Note that the group SU(3)xSU(3)

the currents w h i c h are broken up by the quantum
numbers w h i c h are conserved by the strong interactions.
If the
weak and electric charges are not broken up, then both leptons and
hadrons generate the symmetry U (1)
xSUI2 - [Gell-Mann and Nereman
(19641, 1971
39.

results r o m

40.

Cabibbo (19631, p. 532.

41. As Pickering and Pais both point out, in 1962-63, there were
a few events recorded which showed AS=-AQ,
but after 1964, these
experiments were regarded to be in e r r o r . See Pickering (1984), p.
123, and Pais (1986), p. 5 6 4 .

Gell-Mann abstracted the name "quark" from James Joyce's

Finnegan's Wake. [Pickering (1984), p . 851

42.

Another possible choice that Gell-Mann indicated w a s a set of

f o u r integral%ycharged particles, each carrying an electric charge
of either O or 1, but he thouqht that the set of three
fract ionally-charged quarks w a s simpier and more elegant . [Gell-Mann
(1964a), p . 2141

44.

45-

Gell-Mann ( 1 9 6 4 a 1 , p . 169.

46.

Sakata (1956).

47.

Sakata ( E E 6 ) , p - 6 8 7 .

48-

Fermi and Y a n g (1949)-

49.

Ikeda, O g a w a and Ohnuki ( 1 9 5 9 1

50.
They actually used
U(l)xSU(3).
51 -

U(3).

.
but

this group

factors i n t o

Others also tried assigning particles to representations of

S U ( 3 ) , with varying levels of success, including Wess

Behrends and Sirlin (1961), and Speiser and T a r s k i (19631

52-

(1960),

Zweig ( 1 9 6 4 ) -

53.
Pickering ( 1 9 8 4 1 , Chapter 4 gives a lengthy cornparison of the
differing approaches of Gell-Mann and Zweig.

Kokkedee ( 1 9 6 9 ) , pp. ix-x.

Kokkedee' s book gives a broad
survey of t h e quark model, and includes many original reprints as
well .
54.

55.

Gell-Mann (1964b)-

56.

Gell-Mann (1964b1, p. 7 5 .

57.

Grsey and Radicati (1964), p . 173.

58. Sakita (1964) explored the m a s s relations between SU ( 3 ) supermultiplets in d e t a i l . He was also a b l e to calculate the magnetic
moments of the baryons.

59 -

Pais

(1986), p - 560.

6 0 - Dyson ( 9 6 6 ) has an extensive discussion of SU(6), including

many reprints of the original papers.

61.

Dyson (19661, p - vi.

62-

Greenbexg ( 1 9 6 4 1 , p - 600.

63 . According to Pais, the idea - of parastatistics dates back to

the forties, and it had interested Sommerfeld in his day. [Pais
(1986), p. 5611
64.

See Pickering (1984), pp. 216-220.

65.

Han and Nambu (19651, p - 1006-

66. Han and Nambu actually referred to this quantum number as

c h a m , but charm became associated with the later discovered f o u r t h
quark f lavour . They also refer to t h e two SU ( 3 ) symmetry groups as
SU(3) and S U ( 3 ) " 67.

See Pickering (1984), pp. 2 1 9 - 2 2 0 -

68-

Nambu and Jona-Lasinio (1961)-

69.

Moriyasu (19831, p. 168.

70. See Moriyasu (1983) pp. 570-74, and Brown and Cao (1991) for
a more complete description of the gauge superconductor.
71.

This example is provided by Ryder (19851, pp. 290-91.

72.

Goldstone (19611, pp. 163-64.

73.

Goldstone, Salam, and Weinberg (1962).

74.

These particles are viewed as oscillations in the plasma.

75.

Anderson (1963), p. 441.

76.
Besides Higgs (1964a, 1964br 19661, other papers on the
subject include Brout and Englert (1964), Englert , Brout and Thiry
(1966), and Kibble (1967). Incidentally, Salam gives credit to
Kibble for tutoring him on the H i g g s mechanism at Imperia1 College.

77.

Higgs (1964ar 1964b, 1966) .

78-

Kibble (1967).

79 -

Higgs (1966), p. 1156-

This potential can be thought of as the self-interaction of

80.
the Higgs field, and it has the same mathematical structure as the
potential which describes, phenomenologically, the free energy
density of a superconductor. [Moriyasu (19831 , p. 5711
81. Moriyasu (1983) , p. 5 7 4 . The
by SSB clearly has some unusual
appealing theoretical mechanism
dynamical interaction, but at t h e

generation of gauge fiel& masses

implications.
It is a highly
for producing a mass through .
same time, the requirement of a

fundamental Higgs field with the designated properties leads to a

bizarre picture of what is normally referred to as empty space. In
order f r o m the Higgs ground state to break the gauge synmietry at
any p o i n t , one has to imagine that all of space is filled with a
Higgs field very much l i k e the old-fashioned aether. This aether is
nearly undetectable and the only observable manifestations of it
t h u s far are the masses of the gauge fields-

In l a t e r years,
l e p t o n as well.

82.
T

t h i s theory w a s used to give mass to the

83. In his Nobel P r i z e speech of 1980, Weinberg describes how he

was led t o the electrcweak mode1 [Weinberg (1980 1

85-

Adler (1965), Weisberger (1965)-

86.

Weinberg (198O), p. 516.

87. Through this assumption, g,/g, gets into the picture through
the Goldberger-Treiman relation, which gives this ratio i n terms of
t h e pion decay constant and t h e pion nucleon coupling.
This
relation shows a cannection b e t w e e n the w e a k interactions and the
strong interactions, but this was not really understood f o r alrnost
a decade.
W e i n b e r g ( 1 9 8 0 1 , p. 517.

88.

89. Weinberg says t h a t he w a s intrigued that t h e A l / p mass r a t i o

was d2
H i s next s t e p was to consider what would happen if he
avoided inserting the p-Al mass term in the Lagrangian- Although
the t h e o r y would then be gauge invariant and renormalizable, while
the Al would be massive, it f a i l e d myway, because on t h e downside, there were no pions, and the p mesons were massless, in
obvious contradiction with observation.
90.

Weinberg (1980), p. 517.

91.

Weinberg (19671, p . 1264.

92.

Weinberg (1980), p - 517.

Note that in later formulations, this doublet i s often given

. Note that both of these doublets share the mathematical
structure of t h e kaon system93-

as

94.

(#+,#O)

Salam f 1 9 6 8 ) , p'. 372.

95.
Weinberg (19321, p. 1414,
the Weinberg angle.

The mixing angle i s n o w known as

Bludman (1958), Glashow (1961), Salam and W a r d (1964), A

Irweak" argument can even be made that neutral currents were
predicted by Gamow and T e l l e r in 1937.
96.

9 7 - Substituting in the known strength of the ordinary charged

current weak interactions l i k e B-decay which are mediated by W ,
the mass of the W can be calculated to be 40 GeV/sin, Assuming
that the only other fields are a spin zero S U ( 2 ) doublet ( @ + , @ O ) ,
this determines the Z" mass to be about 80 Gev/sinSB, which fixes
the strength of the neutral current interactions.
(Pais (1986), pp. 595-971
98 . Weinberg (1972). Semileptonic processes are j u s t processes
that have leptons on one side of the process, and not o n the other.
for example, hadrons decaying into leptons.

100 -

Bloom et al- (1969), Breidenbach et a l . (1969).

101- Glashow, Iliopoulos, and Maiani (19701, pp- 1286-87- Note

that they refer to the other thxee quarks as the P-quark, N-quark,
and A-quark, in deference to the Sakata model.
102- Bjorken and Glashow (1964).
Others had also looked for
e v i d e ~ c eof SU (4) in the strong interactions, including T a r j anne
and Teplitz (1963), Krolikowski (1964), Hara ( 1 9 6 4 ) , Amati, B a c r y ,
Nuyts, and Prentki (1964), and Okun (1964).
103 .

Pickering (1984), p. 185 -

104. To be precise, Glashow, Iliopoulos, and Maiani discussed this

problem in terms of an unrenormalizable version of S U ( 2 ) xU(1) , with
no Higgs mechanism.
Weinberg tried, but f a i l e d - In hindsight, he blames
the fact that he wa working in the unitarity gauge, which
advantage that it exhibits the true particle spectrum
theory, b u t at t h e expense of making the renormalizability
obscure. [Weinberg,(1980), p. 5181
105.

1.07.

Feynman (1963).

108.

Faddeev and Popov (19671, p - 29.

this on
has the
of the
totally

1x0-. Pickering (1984), pp. 1 7 4 - 7 5 . Feynman argued, however, that

Veltmanfs equations applied to the strong interactions, and it w a s
only w h e n Veltman read a paper by Bell (1967) that he realized t h a t

his equations were a consequence of a Yang-Mills structure for weak

interactions.
111.

Veltman (1970)-

112. Van Dam and V e l t m a n ( I W O ) ,

pp. 397-98
Pickering (1984)
provides a relevant quote from Veltman, Y . . together w i t h Van Dam
[a visiting scholar] 1 unraveled the great mysteryFinally 1
learned to count to three!"
t'Hooft

113

(1997), pp. 76-79 -

t'Hooft provides a clear, first-

hand account of h o w he was led to his monumental discovery,

114- t'Hooft

(1971a)-

t'Hooft (1971b), ' t gooft got his Ph-D- the following year,
in 1972-[Pickering ( 1 9 8 4 ) , p. 2011

115-

116.
The use of path integrals in gauge theory only became
standard in the 1970s.[Pickering (19841, p . 2011
117.

B e n j a m i n Lee and Zinn-Justin (1972 a,b).

118 -

Weinberg (1980), p . 518.

1x9

Hasert et al. (1973), Benvenuti et al (1973) -

120, A n d r e w Pickering and Peter Galison disagree on the nature of

this discovery.
Pickering thinks that after 1974, physicists
accepted the existence of weak n e u t r a l currents because they
provided an opportunity for the pursuit of interestsKe
understands this as a s h i f t in the interpretative procedures of
physicists, which were transformed and then sustained by a mutually
wewarding symbiosis between theory and practice. Pickering thinks
that the acceptability of weak neutral currents was determined by
the opportunities which their existence offered for future
practice, rather than by hard evidence forcing experimenters to
corne to grips with reality. Galison, on the other hand, views the
neutral curqent discovery very differently . Aithough he agrees
that the sociology of the scientific community is important, he
firmly believes that weak neutral currents are not j u s t an
artifact , but that experimenters were irsesistibly persuaded of the
reality of the effects of neutral currents by a sequence of
evidence and arguments.
See Pickering ( 1 9 8 4 ) , pp - 1 8 O - 9 5 , and
Galison (1983).
121.

Prescott et al- (1978).

122 .
If the neutral currents had demonstrated different
propert ies , other spontaneously broken gauge theories would have
been possible, and even if neutral currents had not been
discovered, G e o r g i and Glashow presented an electroweak theory in

1972 which has no neutral curreats at ail. [ G e o r g i and G l a s h o w

(1972) ] Glashow later criticized this particular variant, however,
as "... both ugly and experirnentally false-Ir
[Glashow (l98O), p - 5401
123 Politzer (1973), Gros and Wilczek (1973).
still a graduate student at the time-

Politzer was

124 B j carken (1969) discovered scaling, which was later

interpreted as a consequence of the parton model- -at high energies ,
photons interact with single, essentially free quarks.

125 -

Gross and Wilczek (1973), p , 1 3 4 5 -

126

Weinberg (19731, p. 495-

127.

The term gluon was first used by Gell-Mann (1962), p. 1073.

128. These conservation laws are ensured apart from some so-called
instantons, which are related to the Bell-Jackiw anomaly, as
explained by 't Hooft (1976).
For a thorough history of the
development of QCD, see Pickering ( 1 9 8 4 1 , Chapter 7.
129-

Pati and Salam (1973a), ~ e o r g iand Glashow (1974).

130. In Pati and SaLam's model, the strong interaction group they
choose is actually S U ( 3 ) x S U ( 3 ) .

131 -

Georgi and Glashow (1974), p . 438.

132 Another requirement is that the group must be of rank 4 Together, these requirements limit possible candidates to S U b ) for
1225, SO (4ni.2 for nr2, and E6 .

133 -

Pati and Salam (1973b), p . 661.

134- Pati and Salam (1973b), p , 661135.

Georgi, Quinn, and Weinberg (1974), p. 4 5 3 .

3 6
Reines and Crouch (1974), Twenty years earlier, Reines,
Cowan, and Goldhaber (1954) had performed the first explicit
experimental tests of the tability of the proton- At that time,
they did not doubt its stability, but they ha& read Wigner (19491,
which discusses a conservation law of heavy particles, and so and
they were interested in invetigating the extent to which the
stability of nucleons could be experirnentally demonstrated. They
determined that the proton lifetime was at least greater than 102'
years, regardless of the decay mechanism, but they reasoned that
most of theiw count rate could be attributed to cosmic rays, and so
they realized that they could get better results by going deeper
underground, and that the proton lifetime should be even longer.

137, One was in the Komestake G o l d Mine in Lead, South Dakota,

where Ray Davis had done his neutrino experiments. Other sites
included a gold mine in India, a mine in Japan, a silver mine in
Utah, an iron mine in Minnesota, and the Morton Salt Mine in OhioTwo detectors were also built off auto tunnels underneath the
French-Italian border. See Perkins (1984), LoSecco (1985).

138-

Perkins (19841, p - 14-

1 3 9 - Note that unlike conservation of charge which is guaranteed

by local gauge invariance, conservation of baryon d e r does not
currently have a gauge symrnetry associated with it. Although Lee
and Yang (1955) discussed the idea of such a symrnetry, it would
need to have some rnassless gauge boson corresponding to it, in
analogy with the photon corresponding to conservation of electric
charge. This should have experimental consequences, however, and
the Etvos-Dicke experiment, which compares inertial and
gravitational mass, indicates that such a massless vector field, if
t
existed, would have to interact even more weakly than the
gravitat ional field, which is already too weakly interacting to
play much of a role elementary p a r t i c l e physics. [Sakurai (1964),
pp. 186-87 - 1 See also Braginskii and Panov (1972).
Furthemore, it can be argued that there is some indirect evidence
for baryon violation.
In 1967, Sakharov argued that the baryon
excess of the universe implies that the proton is unstable, t1 - the absence of antibaryons and the proposed absence of baryonic
neutrinos implies a non-zero baryon charge (barycnic asymmetry)- - ..
To explain baryon asymmetry, we propose-in addition an approximate
character for the baryon conservation law . " [Sakharov (1967 ) , p . 24 1

140.
Bell and Jackiw (1969), and then Stephen Adler (1969),
discovered a triangle anomaly related to the axial vector
interaction. Bouchiat, Iliopoulos, and Meyer (1972) then pointed
out that this A B J anomaly destroys the renormalizability of certain
SU (2 x U (1) electroweak theories, specifically, it ruins the mode1
with three quarks. With the addition of a fourth quark, however,
renormalizability is restored (as long as t h e r z re three
flavours) . Since the GIM rnechanisrn dernands a fourtn quark, its
reptation was enhanced even before the discovery of charm.
141.

Coleman (1979), p . 1291-

142. The W and Z bosons were discovere. shortly after, in 1983 See Rubbia (1985)-

M. Conclusions
In 19 18, Weyl discovered gauge invariance within the context of general relativity.
Weyl was trying to mite gravitation and electromagnetim at a time when the o d y known
particles were the proton, neutron, and photon. His work was mathematicdy appeafing, and

his discovery of scaie invariance ailowed him to derive the conservation of charge.
Unfominately, his theory codicted with experiment, but nevertheless, it was inspiring to
other theorists through its association of geornetrical structure with electromagnetism.

Weyl mon tumed his attention tu the emerging quantum rnechanics Both he and
Wigner pioneered the application of group theory to the new physics. Although they found
the permutation and rotation groups were very useful, however, their work was not widely

appreciated by other physicists unwillingto leam the new mathematical methods. As

quantum mechanics grew into quantum field theory, other symmetnes emerged: parity,
charge-conjugation, and time-reversal. Of these, party was the most important, as it was

useful in the prediction of particle interactions.

Quantum mechanics aiso led to a reinterpretaation of Weyl's theory. Although the nonintegrable factor had previously been interpreted as an invariance of scale, and it had been
applied to the metric, London niggested that it be reinterpreted as an invariance of phase, and

that it be applied innead to the wave-hction. Weyl took up this idea, and he elevated gauge
invariance to a principle. Gauge symmetry was soon recognked as a symmetry of quantum
electrodynamics, as applying gauge invariance to the Lagranpian Leads to the introduction of
the electromagnetic field. ALthough gauge theory was mathematidy attractive, however, it

did not appear to be applicable to the nuclear interactions, because d

the nuclear forces are of very

e electrornagnetimi,

short range.

Heisenberg discovered another symmetry in his theory of nuclear forces, In 1932, he

explained the intense nuclear interaction between protons and neutrons with the help of an
exchange symmetry, Iater generaiized to SU(2) of Wtopic spin foilowing the discovery of

charge independence. A few years later, Fermi offered a new model of fl-decay which

incorporated Pauli's neuttho. Yukawa, in ~

mproposed
,
a

new heavy partkIe, the meson,

which he hoped couid explain both the work of Heisenberg and Fermi.
Meson physics became quite popular, and using SU(2), the neutrd meson was
proposed by Kemmer on the grounds of symmetry! Meson physics soon ran into trouble,
however, as there was a conflict between theory and experiment It was not until 1947 that it
was realized that there are two mesons in cosmic rays, the p and the K.

The Fpaaicles were

soon discovered in cosmic rays as weL They were unusual in that they were produced in
abundance, yet they decayed slowly. This was explained by Pais, who proposed a new

selection nile which accounted for strong production, while ailowing for weak decay, The
strong and weak nuclear forces had been distinguished at I a s t

Gell-Mann and Nishijima improved upon asociated production by introducing

strangeness, a new quantity which was consenred in &ong interactions, but not in weak

interactions. Study of the strange K-particles soon revealed that weak interactions vioIated

more than strangeness, they violated party! rUthough parity conservation had been tnisted
for y=,

it came crashing down in 1957, and party violation rapidly became the hallmark of

the weak interactions. In 1958, the V-A

incorporated it very weil by treating the weak

interactions as a combination of vector and axial-vector cwrents.

Gauge invariance was revived by Yang and Milis in 1954. They were very impressed
by the link between charge conservation and the introduction of the eiectromagnetic field, and

so they decided to extend the idea to isotopic spin conservation. They boldy imposed
isotopic gauge invariance upon the strong interaction Lagrangian, forcing the introduction of
three new vector fieids.

Here were three more partides predicted on the grounds of

symmetry! Yang and Miils realized that these particles needed to be massive to explain the

shoa range of the nuclear interaction, but they recognized, at the same time, that addhg masterms to the Lagrangian would ruin gauge invariance. In spite of this zero-mass problem,

Sakurai forged ahead in 1960,and predicted that there were not only three vector particles

coupling to the isotopic spin current, but there should also be two more, one coupling to the
hypercharge current, and the other to the baryon number current.

Gell-Mann and Ne'eman built upon this work, increasing the number of vector
particles to eight. These eight gauge bosons were associated with unitary spin, a new quantity
which incorporated conservation of isotopic spin and hypercharge. Their scheme, the
Eightfold Way, not only related the eight vector mesons to each other, but it dso d o w e d the

arrangement of groups of baryons and mesons into different super-multiplets corresponding to

representations of the group SU(3). These super-multiplets were useful because they link

together dinerent isotopic spin multiplets in which dl the particles have idenacal parity and
spin, and in addition, they allowed Gell-Mann and Ne'eman to predict new particles, which

were soon found with the expected properties. SU(3) proved to

be very usefl in classifyulg

the rapidly expanding zoo of strongly interacting elemenrmy particles.

Both Gell-Mann and Zweig suggested that the fiindamental triplet of SU(3) could be

identified with a trio of particles, known as quarks. Gell-Mann did not view them as physicai
particles at frst, but they rapidiy became indispensable within partcle physics. U h g quarks,
ali

hadrons could be treated as combinations of three quarks, A d their antl-particles.

Furthemore, although previously, it had not been clear how to make weak currents fiom
hadrons, weak currents codd easily be constructed fiom quarks.

Efforts were being made to apply Yang-Mills theory to weak interactions as well, and
indeed, it was tempting to identify weak IVBs as gauge particles. Schwinger attempted to

place the two charged weak M3s and the electromagnetic photon in an isotopic triplet, and
following him, Bludman also used an isotopic triplet, although he repIaced the photon in the
representation with a neutral weak IVB. In 1961, Glashow decided to include ali four of
these mediating particles

in a unified SU(2)xU(I) theory. This was attractive, but like the

other efforts, it faced the zero-mass difnculty. This long-standing problem was finally solved
using spontaneous symmetry breaking. In 1967-68, Weinberg and Salam showed how to
apply the ingenious Higgs mechanism to generate vector meson masses while preserving
gauge invariance. At last, there was a gauge theory of the eiectroweak interactions, but

neither Weinberg and Salam could prove that it was renomalizable. This was nnally
achieved in 1971 by a Dutch graduae student, Gerard 't Hooft. Following this achievement,

in 1973, it was shown that the strong interactions could also be treated using the local gauge

group SU(3) of colour, which predicts the existence ofeight massless gluons.

The idea of gauge symmetry thus moved n o m its proposition as an extension of

general relativity, to its recognition as a symmetry of quantum electrodynamics, and rhen

ultimately, to a centrai role in theoreticai partide physics- Aithough symmenies had

previously been sought in the Lagrangian to provide dues to the equations of motioa gauge

symmetry allowed theonsts to knpose symrnetries upon the Lagrangian, thus generating
dynamics, and predicting the existence of physicai particles. As aiways, these theones are

subject to experimental verification, but the combination of SU(3)xSU(2)xU(I) bas passed all
the tests.

To this day, the Standard Mode1 serves as a fiamework for future practice, and at

the same time, it serves as a constant reminder of the power of group theoq, the formal

mathematics of symmetry.

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