Abstract
I wish to discuss some rather incomplete ideas concerning difficulties that arise in some parts of quantum mechanics. In general there have been no serious difficulties when we are dealing with a finite number of particles, but very essential difficulties arise as soon as we treat a system having an infinite number of degrees of freedom; for example, the theory of holes, which, because of the pair generation, requires an indefinite number of particles; also the Dirac non-relativistic theory of light and the Pauli-Heisenberg relativistic quantum electro-dynamics, these being equivalent to systems consisting of an infinite number of particles.
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Editors’ Notes
In the mimeographed lecture notes, von Neumann’s contribution appears on pp. 147–172. For the present publication the equations have been renumbered.
Here we omit the sentence “(This is explained also on p. 109 of these notes.)” which refers to a technical point in the contribution of Maurice Pryce. We thank Karl von Meyenn for making the full notes available to us.
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© 2001 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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von Neumann, J. (2001). Quantum Mechanics of Infinite Systems. In: Rédei, M., Stöltzner, M. (eds) John von Neumann and the Foundations of Quantum Physics. Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook [2000], vol 8. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2012-0_18
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2012-0_18
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-5651-1
Online ISBN: 978-94-017-2012-0
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