What is recorded here?
Rabi solves the four-component Dirac electron equations in a homogeneous magnetic field, obtains discrete transverse energy branches with continuous longitudinal momentum, and explains a special lowest-state current condition, without deriving thermodynamic diamagnetism. A magnetic field changes the allowed motion of an electron. Rabi used the newly introduced Dirac equation to solve this clean example while keeping relativity and the electron's spin structure together. The motion along the field remains continuous; across it, only particular energy levels are allowed. In the lowest branch the transverse contribution can vanish, while rest energy and motion along the field remain. The paper also finds a vanishing circulating current in that branch and warns against treating spin and ordinary motion as independent classical pieces. This concrete solution helped make the new equation usable. It is a different contribution from Landau's later calculation of a magnetic material response and from Rabi's later magnetic-resonance experiments.
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Scientific scope
The calculation concerns the Dirac equation in a stated magnetic-field model and its energy/state interpretation. Boundary and ideal-field assumptions matter. It is not the later molecular-beam resonance technique or a complete interacting-field theory. Contemporary and later experimental contributions remain separate.
Read the original work
- I. I. Rabi, Das freie Elektron im homogenen Magnetfeld nach der Diracschen Theorie; original1928
- Publisher-deposited identity for the exact original 1928 paper
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People and systems
I. I. Rabi
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English catalogue narrative
Rabi: solving the relativistic electron in a uniform magnetic field
Rabi solves the four-component Dirac electron equations in a homogeneous magnetic field, obtains discrete transverse energy branches with continuous longitudinal momentum, and explains a special lowest-state current condition, without deriving thermodynamic diamagnetism.
A magnetic field changes the allowed motion of an electron. Rabi used the newly introduced Dirac equation to solve this clean example while keeping relativity and the electron's spin structure together. The motion along the field remains continuous; across it, only particular energy levels are allowed. In the lowest branch the transverse contribution can vanish, while rest energy and motion along the field remain. The paper also finds a vanishing circulating current in that branch and warns against treating spin and ordinary motion as independent classical pieces. This concrete solution helped make the new equation usable. It is a different contribution from Landau's later calculation of a magnetic material response and from Rabi's later magnetic-resonance experiments.
Scientific scope
The calculation concerns the Dirac equation in a stated magnetic-field model and its energy/state interpretation. Boundary and ideal-field assumptions matter. It is not the later molecular-beam resonance technique or a complete interacting-field theory. Contemporary and later experimental contributions remain separate.
People and systems
I. I. Rabi