Description
Book SynopsisChapter 1. Introduction.- Chapter 2. How to conceive of the concept of virtual particles in a historical study of its development.- Chapter 3. The community of practitioners.- Part I. From virtual oscillators to virtual transitions (1923–1929).- Chapter 4. The BKS theory and the Light Quantum Hypothesis: virtual entities and transitions to intermediate states, but in different conceptual frameworks (1923–1925).- Chapter 5. Dirac’s verbal model: Making transitions a quantum concept (1927).- Chapter 6. The Raman effect: How virtual transitions became “virtual” (for the first time) and real transitions were excluded from the conception of scattering (1928–1929).- Part II. Theoretical practice with virtual transitions (1928–1942).- Chapter 7. Scattering and the sea: Antiparticles and intermediate states (1928–1931).- Chapter 8. The practice of time-dependent perturbation theory (Part I): Formal and conceptual extensions (1929–1936).- Chapter 9 The practice of time-dependent perturbation theory (Part II): Virtual possibilities, modes of representation, and the reprise of the “Schüttelwirkung” (1934–1942).- Part III. From virtual transitions to virtual particles (1930–1949).- Chapter 10. In between: Traces of the virtual particle during the 1930s.- Chapter 11. Outlook: Feynman, diagrams, and virtual particles (1948–1949).- Part IV. Analysis, Summary, and Conclusion.- Chapter 12. Representations and Practices in the Formation of the Virtual Particle Concept.
