Summary Talk: Theoretical

Abstract

My very weak link to strong field physics began in June, 1971 when I spent a month in Frankfurt at the kind invitation of Walter Greiner, who proved, as always, an excellent teacher as well as an excellent host. I still recall the pervasive attitude which was that diving into the negative energy continuum was somehow not a respectable activity, at least for a physical phenomenon, and all reasonable efforts should be made to avoid it. However, all such efforts proved fruitless and within a couple of years the basic physics of spontaneous positron emission was elucidated byMüller,Rafelski, andGreinerand independently byLewis Fulcherandmyself(only thirteen years after the phenomenon was recognized in a paper by Voronko and Kolesnikov, a paper which was unearthed a few years after the work cited) (see W. Greiner’s introduction to the Lahnstein proceedings).