Stability of Matter

Abstract

One of the fundamental properties of real matter is that its energy is an extensive quantity because the chemical forces are saturating. This ought to be a consequence of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics where a system composed of electrons and nuclei is described by a Hamiltonian

$$ H_N = \sum\limits_{i = 1}^N {\frac{{p_i^2 }} {{2m_i }} + \sum\limits_{i > j} {\left( {e_i e_j - km_i m_j } \right)\left| {x_i - x_j } \right|^{ - 1} } } $$

(1)

(Notation: (x_i, p_i, m_i; e_i)are position,momentum, mass and charge of the i^th particle, N is their total number, κ the gravitational constant.

Lecture given at XV.Internationale Universitätswochen für Kernphysik, Schladming, Austria, February 16–27, 1976.