English

On a Seldom Oversight in Fermi's Calculations: Seventy Years Later

History and Philosophy of Physics 2025-04-08 v5

Abstract

We discuss an unfortunate mistake, for a Dirac free particle, in the last Fermi lecture notes on quantum mechanics, in a course given at the University of Chicago in winter and spring of 1954. As is demonstrated, the correct result can be obtained by a simple matrix multiplication. An attempt to collect a relevant bibliography is made.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2309.16676,
  title  = {On a Seldom Oversight in Fermi's Calculations: Seventy Years Later},
  author = {Sergei K. Suslov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2309.16676},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

14 pages, 4 figures, 51 references