The columnar theory developed by Jaffé to account for the recombination of ions in alpha particle tracks is extended to beta rays by taking account of the clusters of secondary ionisation. Reasonable agreement is obtained with experiment. Recombination in proton tracks produced in hydrogen by neutrons is shown to be in agreement with the columnar theory, but in the case of nitrogen nuclear tracks in nitrogen the recombination is only a hundredth of that predicted by the theory. An explanation of this effect is advanced, and it is suggested that recombination is likely to be abnormally small for all heavy nuclei of velocities not exceeding 5 × 108 cm. per sec.

An experimental determination of the coefficient of recombination of ions in nitrogen and hydrogen at pressures of 20, 40 and 90 atmospheres is reported.

My thanks are due to Dr Chadwick for interest in this work, and to Dr Gray and Dr Tarrant for advice on the experimental technique of high pressure ionisation measurements. I am indebted also to the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research for a maintenance grant.

1. Introduction

It has been known for some time that contact structures show a high degree of topological flexibility in the sense that many topological operations can be performed on contact manifolds while preserving the contact property. For instance, Martinet [14] used a surgery description of 3-manifolds to show that every closed, oriented 3-manifold admits a contact structure, and alternative proofs of this result were given later by Thurston and Winkelnkemper [18], who based their proof on an open book decomposition, and Gonzalo [8], who used branched covers. These, however, are all strictly 3-dimensional constructions.

The paper considers the application of Dirac's classical theory of radiating electrons to consider the straight line motion of an electron towards a fixed proton and the straight line motion of two oppositely charged electrons. The paper also gives a discussion of the probable solutions in two- and three-dimensional motions of an electron moving round a fixed proton. In all these cases there appears to be no solution which would permit a collision between the two particles.

I take this opportunity to express my deepest gratitude to Prof. Dirac for his patient guidance and supervision, and also to Christ's College for a scholarship.

Note added. In the problem of the rectilinear motion considered in section (2), if we take the charges on the particles to be of like signs, then we find that the equations of motion have a solution which corresponds to a collision. In place of equation (4) we have

It can be easily verified that under suitable initial conditions there is a solution with x→0 and y→∞. Near x=0 the solution is approximately . Thus a collision is possible for like charges and not possible for unlike charges. The result, in both cases, is the opposite of what we should expect from elementary physical considerations.

The critical-field curves of pure aluminium, gallium, thorium and zinc were measured by a magnetic induction method. An unusually marked supercooling effect was found in aluminium and to a much smaller extent also in gallium; some experiments on this effect are discussed. The first three of these metals were found to have “ideally pure” superconducting properties, and thorium, although belonging to the “hard” group of superconductors, had a value of dHc/dT of only 190 gauss/degree K. Only a very minute fraction of the volume of a titanium specimen was found to become superconducting at temperatures down to 1° K., although Meissner had found a titanium wire to have zero resistance below 1·8° K.; an explanation of this discrepancy is put forward. Molybdenum and uranium did not become superconducting down to 0·3 and 0·98° K. respectively, though, in the case of one uranium sample, a small fraction of the volume showed superconducting effects as in titanium.

Let pik (s, t) (i, k = 1, 2, …; s ≤ t) be the transition probabilities of a Markov process in a system with an enumerable set of states. The states are labelled by positive integers, and pik (s, t) is the conditional probability that the system be in state k at time t, given that it was in state i at an earlier time s. If certain regularity conditions are imposed on the pik, they can be shown to satisfy the well-known Kolmogorov equations§

Given any sense preserving harmonic mapping f=h+ḡ in the unit disk, we prove that for all |λ|=1 the functions fλ=h+λḡ are univalent (resp. close-to-convex, starlike, or convex) if and only if the analytic functions Fλ=h+λg are univalent (resp. close-to-convex, starlike, or convex) for all such λ. We also obtain certain necessary geometric conditions on h in order that the functions fλ belong to the families mentioned above. In particular, we see that if fλ are univalent for all λ on the unit circle, then h is univalent.

In my paper under the same title, to which I shall refer in future as I‡, I generalized the Vitali covering principle from the case of Lebesgue measure to the case of any non-negative additive function. This allowed me to establish the relative differentiation of additive functions. The convergent sequences of sets in this generalized form of the covering principle were restricted to sequences of concentric circles, and therefore the differentiation arrived at was that in the symmetrical sense. In the present paper, I extend the principle to the case of any regular convergent sequences of covering sets; and then establish the relative differentiation of additive functions in the general sense, and in particular the differentiation of indefinite integrals with respect to any measure function. This problem has a complete solution. It is established that indefinite integrals are differentiable at almost all points. In the case of the general measure function, it is not true that the derivative is equal to the integrand at almost all points, but necessary and sufficient conditions are given under which this is true.

The existence and nature of singularities in locally spatially homogeneous solutions of the Einstein equations coupled to various phenoraenological matter models is investigated. It is shown that, under certain reasonable assumptions on the matter, there are no singularities in an expanding phase of the evolution and that unless the spacetime is empty a contracting phase always ends in a singularity where at least one scalar invariant of the curvature diverges uniformly. The class of matter models treated includes perfect fluids, mixtures of non-interacting perfect fluids and collisionless matter.

The queue M |G| l is considered in the case in which customers are served in random order. A formal solution is obtained for the waiting time distribution in the steady state, and is used to consider the exponential decay of the distribution. The moments of the waiting time are examined, and the asymptotic form of the distribution in heavy traffic is found. Finally, the problem is related to those of the busy period and the approach to the steady state.

In the general theory of relativity a number of apparently unrelated identities peculiar to a 4-dimensional space are frequently used. However, the proofs usually presented appear to have no common ideas and, furthermore, it is not clear at what stage the dimensionality restriction plays a significant role. In this note a technique is presented which explicitly exhibits the dimensionality dependence and thereby enables the above identities to be generalized for n-dimensional spaces. It is also shown that the above identities are all special cases of a more general identity valid for n = 4.

In a recent series of papers (10), (11), (12), I. M. James has made an illuminating study of Stiefel manifolds. We shall begin by describing his results (for the complex case). Let Wn, k, for k > 1, denote the complex Stiefel manifold U(n)/U(n − k), where U(n) is the unitary group in n variables. Then we have a natural fibre map Wn, k → Wn, 1 = S2n−1, where Sr denotes the r-dimensional sphere. Let Pn, k, for k ≥ 1, denote the ‘stunted complex projective space’ obtained from the (n − 1)-dimensional complex projective space† Pn by identifying to a point a subspace Pn−k. Then we have a natural ‘cofibre map’ Pn, k → Pn, 1 = S2n−2. The space Pn, k is said to be S-reducible if some suspension of the map Pn, k → S2n−2 has a right homotopy inverse. The results of James can then be summarized as follows.

It was shown by Mehler (1866) that

where Hk(x) denotes the Hermite polynomial

(Hermite, 1864a, b), which can be expressed in terms of Weber's parabolic cylinder function (Whittaker, 1903). The series is convergent if | ρ | < 1, and divergent if | ρ | > 1. If ρ = 1 and x = y = 0 the series is divergent, and Hille's work (1938) shows that it will therefore be divergent for all real or complex values, except possibly real positive values, of x and y.

When the electric intensities on two parallel planes, of which the two perfectly conducting sides of a wave-guide of finite length and infinite width are portions, are taken as unknowns, the problem of the diffraction of a plane harmonic electromagnetic wave polarized parallel to the edges of the guide leads to two integral equations. By means of the Laplace transform these equations are converted into others suitable for solution by successive substitutions. The series thus obtained is too complex for practical purposes, and so an approximate solution is found for the case when the length of the guide is large compared with the wavelength. Finally, there is a brief discussion of the difference between the distant fields when l is large and when l is infinite.

In an interesting recent paper Schrödinger(5) contributes much new information on the properties of the hypercomplex algebra used in meson theory(1, 2, 4, 6, 7) which is defined by the relations(3)

The determination of the minimal s such that all large natural numbers n admit a representation as

is an interesting problem in the additive theory of numbers and has a considerable literature, For historical comments the reader is referred to the author's paper [2] where the best currently known result is proved. The purpose here is a further improvement.

Let GF(q) be the finite field containing q = pl elements, where p is a prime and l a positive integer. Let P(x) be a monic polynomial in GF[q, x] of degree m. In this paper we investigate the nature and distribution of monic irreducible polynomials of the following types:

(I) P(xr), where r is a positive integer (r-polynomials).

(II) xm P(x + x−1). (Reciprocal polynomials.) These have the form

(III) xrmP(xr + x−r). (r-reciprocal polynomials.) These have the form Q(xr), where q(x) satisfies (1·1).

The existence of a steady vortex ring close to Hill's spherical vortex is established, and an approximate description of its boundary is given. The vorticity in the ring is proportional to the distance from the axis of symmetry. The core propagates steadily in an unbounded fluid at rest at infinity. The boundary of the vortex ring is close to an interior stream surface of Hill's vortex.

The main purpose of the note is to compare necessary and sufficient conditions for weak ergodicity of finite inhomogeneous Markov chains given by Doeblin (3) and Hajnal (4), the former paper being little known; and more generally to expand on the nature and consequences of Doeblin's approach as compared to Hajnal's in some detail. A consequence is some insight into the relation between various ‘coefficients of ergodicity’.

1. The Hahn-Banach theorem on the extension of linear functionals holds in real and complex Banach spaces, but it is well known that it is not in general true in a normed linear space over a field with a non-Archimedean valuation. Sufficient conditions for its truth in such a space have been given, however, by Monna and by Cohen‡. In the present paper, we show that a necessary condition for the property is that the space be totally non-Archimedean in the sense of Monna, and establish a necessary and sufficient condition on the field for the theorem to hold in every totally non-Archimedean space over the field. This result is obtained as a special case of a more general theorem concerning linear operators, which is analogous to a theorem of Nachbin ((6), Theorem 1) concerning operators in real Banach spaces.

Let BG be the classifying space of a finite group G. Consider the problem of finding a stable decomposition

into indecomposable wedge summands. Such a decomposition naturally splits E*(BG), where E* is any cohomology theory.