My new book, now available in the UK and released in the US in early December, explores how quantum events occur during routine morning routines. It is said in my bio that it is included after these postings. Given Einstein's well-known hatred for quantum physics in his later years, the title of the book, Breakfast with Einstein, could seem a strange choice for a book about the subject. The majority of popular interpretations of Einstein focus on his protracted debate with Niels Bohr over the philosophical underpinnings of the theory, and it's practically required to quote (or at least paraphrase) his statement in a letter to Max Born about the statistical nature of the theory: Quantum mechanics is very impressive. It is not yet the real thing, says a voice inside me. Although the idea generates many results, it doesn't help us uncover the Old One's mystery. He doesn't roll dice, which is something we are sure of.
Does putting Einstein's name in the title in the hopes that it would boost book sales amount to brazen money grab? Not much; in fact, it's pretty acceptable to put Einstein's name there, given that he was a crucial figure in the development of quantum physics. He was mistaken about the underlying physics, but in a way that opened up a wealth of new opportunities for physicists and technologists; thus, even his final statement as he quit the quantum game for good contributed to the field's advancement.
In one of his "miracle year" articles published in 1905, Einstein modified Max Planck's initial quantum hypothesis to propose that light has a particle character. This work is considered to be his most notable contribution to quantum theory. Even though relativity is sometimes hailed as a fundamental advance in physics, Einstein's genuinely breakthrough work was studying the photoelectric effect.
Max Planck, whose relationship between energy and frequency was essential to the theory, stated in a letter of recommendation that it is impossible to introduce fundamentally new ideas, even in the most exact science, without sometime taking a risk. It is true that [Einstein] may have occasionally missed the target in his speculations, as with his hypothesis of light quanta, for example.
The citations for Millikan's Nobel Prize in 1923 and Einstein's Nobel Prize in 1921 notably mention the photoelectric effect, a delightful touch of irony. Due to minor differences over relativity within the Swedish academy, it is the sole particular theory cited in Einstein's Nobel citation ("for his achievements to Theoretical Physics, and notably for discovering the law of the photoelectric effect"). Though the particle nature of light is at the core of much contemporary technology, it is a good subject for a reward. The photoelectric effect, which occurs when a photon ejects an electron from a material, is a good illustration of how the particle nature of light may be used to excite electrons between bands in a semiconductor when using a digital camera. Another critical advancement made by Einstein in the industry is how sending digital photos via social media rely on the quantum nature of light.
The photoelectric effect was first mentioned in 1905, but Einstein didn't address it until the late 1920s when he first began to engage in philosophical debates with Bohr. This is true of many textbooks that cover early quantum physics. However, it's arguable that his 1917 publication of a mammoth book on the interplay of light and atoms with quantum physics was his most significant to the field.
Two of the three processes that Einstein identified—the process of spontaneous emission, in which an atom in a high-energy state drops down to a low-energy state and emits some light, and the process of absorption, in which an atom absorbs some of the light and moves to a high-energy state—and the third process—that can occur in a system of Bohr-type atoms with two energy states interact with light of the right frequency—were already well-known. Additionally, he developed a novel phenomenon called spontaneous emission, which causes an atom with high energy to release additional light of the same frequency before returning to a low energy state in response to light stimulation. He used an analogy from mechanics to say that this hadn't been thought of before but logically must exist.
Einstein took those three processes and assigned them probabilities (today, the probability of spontaneous emission is denoted by the symbol "A," and the probability of absorption or stimulated emission is denoted by the symbol "B" with some subscripts); he then examined what could be inferred about these probabilities and the characteristics of light. He discovered a plethora of information that could be examined empirically, such as a specific link between the A and B coefficients and a formula for A in terms of the frequency of light and a few other well-known features. These so-called "Einstein coefficients" are still helpful in describing how light interacts with atoms. He also demonstrated how this interaction must transfer energy and momentum between atoms and light. He used these images to provide yet another method to illustrate how the Planck formula applies to the black-body spectrum of light emitted by hot objects. It's a brilliant work that played a big part in getting scientists to agree that light is a quantum phenomenon.
Additionally, one of the essential current technologies was sown into the ground by this study. The laser, whose name was originally an abbreviation for "Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation," is at its core Einstein's innovative method of stimulated emission. Using stimulated emission, a laser creates a focused, bright light beam. A group of high-energy atoms is placed between two mirrors, and any photons they produce bounce back and forth between the mirrors, stimulating the emission of more and more photons, each of which has the same frequency and is traveling in the same direction as the one that stimulated it. These days, lasers are used in everything from pet toys to grocery scanners to industrial cutters to the fibre-optic telecommunications networks that power the Internet and allow you to read this sentence. Without light having a quantum character, as initially proposed by Einstein, none of that would be conceivable.
In other words, despite the extensive documentation of Einstein's ultimate dissatisfaction with quantum mechanics, he was instrumental in developing the theory. Even after leaving the field, he continued to have a significant impact because of the 1935 "EPR" paper he co-authored with younger colleagues Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, which gave one of the earliest examples of what is now known as "entanglement" and laid the groundwork for ground-breaking research into both the philosophical underpinnings of quantum physics and the technology of quantum information. Since entanglement has already been the subject of several blog entries (start here and follow the links...), we won't discuss it here. However, it's intriguing to note that even though Einstein was mistaken about quantum physics, his work still had a profound impact.
Therefore, it is appropriate that my upcoming book on quantum physics bears Einstein's name in the title.
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