Abstract
The purpose of this note is to trace in more detail the consequences of treating the conservation law for heavy particles1 on a par with the conservation law for electric charges. It is thus an attempt to guess at the properties of particles as yet unknown and their interactions, and therefore speculative. However, it does not attempt a classification of elementary particles similar to that proposed recently by several writers, in particular, A. Pais.2 In this regard it is somewhat more conservative.
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References
It is difficult to trace the first statement of this principle. It is clearly contained. in the writer’s article in Proc. Am. I’hilos. Soc.,93, 521 (1949)
It is difficult to trace the first statement of this principle but may have been recognized about that time also by others, cf. T. Okayama, Phys. Rev., 75, 308 (1949).
C. N. Yang informs me that the purpose of introducing an imaginary character to the reflection properties of certain fermions in the paper of J. Tiomno and C. N. Yang (Phys. Rev.,79, 495 (1950))
C. N. Yang was to explain this principle. Cf. also L. I. Schiff, Phys. Rev., 85, 374 (1952)
P. Jordan, Z. f. Nalurf., 7a, 78 (1952).
Pais, A., “On the V-Particle.” To appear shortly. Also literature quoted there.
Cf., e.g., the discussion in the article quoted in reference 2.
Cf., e.g., E. P. Wigner and E. Feenberg, Reports on Progress in Physics,Vol. VIII, 1942, p. 274
W. Heitler, Proc. Roy. Irish Acad., 51A, 33 (1946).
Recently K. A. Brueckner gave a very interesting illustration of the principle given in the last reference (Bull. Am. Phys. Soc.,27, 1, paper Y9 (1952)).
Schwinger, J., Phys. Rev.,78, 135 (1950) demonstrated possible causes which give apparent, but only apparent, deviations from this equality.
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Wigner, E.P. (1995). On the Law of Conservation of Heavy Particles. In: Mehra, J. (eds) Philosophical Reflections and Syntheses. The Collected Works of Eugene Paul Wigner, vol B / 6. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-78374-6_25
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