Richard Feynman and Condensed Matter Physics

FEB 01, 1989

During the mid‐1950s Feynman’s interests concentrated on problems in condensed matter, including liquid helium, rotons, polarons and superconductivity.

DOI: 10.1063/1.881194

David Pines

From 1953 to 1958 Richard Feynman worked primarily on problems in condensed matter physics. Of the 14 scientific papers he published during this period, ten are devoted to the physics of liquid helium, one discusses the relation between superconductivity and superfluidity, and one deals with the motion of slow electrons in polar crystals, the “polaron” problem; the remaining two describe work Feynman had carried out on quantum electrodynamics and hadron physics earlier at Cornell. He brought to the condensed matter problems the same remarkable originality and physical insight that characterized his earlier work on quantum electrodynamics and the path integral method, and through his contributions he made a lasting impact on the subfields of low‐temperature physics and statistical mechanics.

References

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For a further development of London’s seminal ideas, see also F. London, Superfluids, vol. 2, Dover, New York (1954).
2. L. Tisza, Nature 141, 913 (1938); https://doi.org/NATUAS
L. Tisza, C. R. Acad. Sci. 207, 1035, 1186 (1938);
L. Tisza, Phys. Rev. 72, 838 (1947).https://doi.org/PHRVAO
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L. D. Landau, Phys. Rev. 60, 354 (1941); https://doi.org/PHRVAO
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9. As Feynman notes, similar wavefunctions had been proposed earlier, for example, by A. Bijl, Physica 7, 896 (1940).https://doi.org/PHYSAG
10. K. S. Bedell, I. Fomin, D. Pines, J. Low Temp. Phys. 48, 417 (1982).https://doi.org/JLTPAC
11. K. S. Bedell, A. Zawadowski, D. Pines, Phys. Rev. B 29, 102 (1984).https://doi.org/PRBMDO
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13. M. Cohen, R. P. Feynman, Phys. Rev. 107, 13 (1957).https://doi.org/PHRVAO
14. The pioneering experiments were carried out by H. Palevsky and his collaborators at Brookhaven in 1957.
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D. L. Price, in Physics of Liquid and Solid Helium, vol. 2, K. H. Bennemann, J. B. Ketteson, eds., Wiley, New York (1978), p. 675.
15. For a review of this approach, see D. Pines, Can. J. Phys. 65, 1357 (1987).https://doi.org/CJPHAD
16. E. Manousakis, V. R. Pandharipande, Phys. Rev. B 30, 5062 (1984).https://doi.org/PRBMDO
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20. R. P. Feynman, R. W. Hellwarth, C. K. Iddings, P. M. Platzman, Phys. Rev. 127, 1004 (1962).https://doi.org/PHRVAO
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More about the Authors

David Pines. University of Illinois, Urbana‐Champaign.