Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-v5vhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-04T16:13:02.736Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

44 - Gauge principle, vector-meson dominance, and spontaneous symmetry breaking

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2010

Get access

Summary

With the benefit of hindsight, I would like to speak on certain theoretical developments that occurred during the late 1950s. The subject matter I shall discuss centers around the views regarding the meaning and role of symmetries, or the lack thereof. I shall talk in particular about the happenings in Chicago, not only because they are what I experienced at first hand but also because one of the participants, Jun John Sakurai, unfortunately cannot be heard any more. Let me begin by stating that, at the risk of oversimplification, I regard Ernest Lawrence and Hideki Yukawa as the two founding fathers of particle physics, in that they respectively established the basic experimental and theoretical methodologies in this field. That these are the basic methodologies still holds true, with some qualifications that I shall come to in a moment.

Limiting myself to the theoretical side only, Yukawa's way was to freely invent (or postulate) new particles in order to explain phenomena that are new or not yet understood. Although Yukawa stopped pursuing this direction after his success with the meson theory, the philosophy behind it was articulated and practiced by his collaborator Shoichi Sakata, yielding further successes. The two-meson theory was one such example. At any rate, Yukawa's approach was phenomenological and ad hoc, in that it lacked a theoretical guiding principle of its own, which was perhaps the reason why he stopped pursuing it. This contrasts with the current situation in which gauge theory has established itself as the supreme principle.

Type
Chapter
Information
Pions to Quarks
Particle Physics in the 1950s
, pp. 639 - 642
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1989

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×