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Deviation from the Coulomb law for the proton

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

S. T. Ma
Affiliation:
Queens' CollegeCambridge

Extract

In a recent paper, Fröhlich, Heitler and Kahn(1) discussed the deviation from the Coulomb law for the proton on the basis of the meson theory. Instead of being considered as a point charge, the proton was assumed to be surrounded by a meson field, which interacts with an external electrostatic field. They deduced the result that the Coulomb attraction between the proton and a negative point charge goes over into a strong repulsion for distances less than one-sixth of the electronic radius. This has been found to agree with the experiment by R. C. Williams on the fine structure in the spectrum of the hydrogen atom and the interpretation of this experiment by Pasternack. Later experiments(2), however, seem to indicate that the effect is much smaller than the theory predicts.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge Philosophical Society 1940

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References

REFERENCES

(1)Fröhlich, , Heitler, and Kahn, . Proc. Roy. Soc. A, 171 (1939), 268.Google Scholar
(2)Drinkwater, , Richardson, and Williams, . Proc. Roy. Soc. A, 174 (1940), 164.Google Scholar
(3)Heitler, . Nature, London, 145 (1940), 29.Google Scholar
Heitler, and Ma, . Proc. Roy. Soc. A (in the press).Google Scholar