(Unlike most textbooks on electromagnetic theory, which tr...)
Unlike most textbooks on electromagnetic theory, which treat electricity, magnetism, Coulomb's law and Faraday's law as almost independent subjects within the framework of the theory, this well-written text takes a relativistic point of view in which electric and magnetic fields are really different aspects of the same physical quantity. Suitable for advanced undergraduates and graduate students, this volume offers a superb exposition of the essential unity of electromagnetism in its natural , relativistic framework while demonstrating the powerful constraint of relativistic invariance. It will be seen that all electromagnetism follows from electrostatics and from the requirement for the simplest laws allowable under the relativistic constraint. By means of these insights, the author hopes to encourage students to think about theories as yet undeveloped and to see this model as useful in other areas of physics. After an introductory chapter establishing the mathematical background of the subject and a survey of some new mathematical ideas, the author reviews the principles of electrostatics. He then introduces Einstein's special theory of relativity and applies it throughout the rest of the book. Topics treated range from Gauss's theorem, Coulomb's law, the Faraday effect and Fresnel's equations to multiple expansion of the radiation field , interference and diffraction, waveguides and cavities and electric and magnetic susceptibility. Carefully selected problems at the end of each chapter invite readers to test their grasp of the material.
Melvin Schwartz was an American educator, physicist, scientist, entrepreneur and author. He was known for his research concerning neutrinos, subatomic particles that have no electric charge and virtually no mass.
Background
Melvin Schwartz was born on November 2, 1932 in New York City, New York, United States. He is a son of Harry Schwartz and Hannah (Shulman) Schwartz. Desperately poor as a result of the Great Depression, his parents worked extraordinarily hard to give their sons economic stability. He had a brother, Bernard Schwartz.
Education
Melvin Schwart's interest in physics really began at the age of twelve when he entered the Bronx High School of Science in New York. That school has become famous for the large number of outstanding individuals it has produced including among them four Nobel Laureates in Physics. The four years he spent there were certainly among the most exciting and stimulating of his life, mostly because of the interaction with other students having similar background, interest and ability. In 1953 Schwitz received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the Columbia University and a Doctor of Philosophy in 1958.
From 1956 to 1958 Melvin Schwartz was an associate physicist at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. During an afternoon coffee hour in November, 1959, at Columbia’s Pupin Laboratory, a group of physicists discussed the problems of studying the weak force, one of the four fundamental forces of nature (the others being gravitation, electromagnetism and the strong force). Tsung-Dao Lee, a theoretical physicist, challenged his colleagues to find a way to obtain additional empirical evidence on the weak force. The challenge at first seemed an enormous one since at atomic dimensions, the weak force is much weaker — and therefore much harder to observe — than are the electromagnetic and strong forces. Schwartz later described his feeling about Lee’s challenge as one of "hopelessness. There seemed to be no decent way," he said, "of exploring the terribly small crosssections characteristic of weak interactions." This feeling lasted less than twenty-four hours, as that evening, Schwartz suddenly had the answer. "It was incredibly simple," he decided. "All you had to do was use neutrinos."
Neutrinos turned out to be the perfect tool with which to study the weak force. Because these tiny particles are uncharged and have very small mass, they are essentially unaffected by electromagnetic or strong forces. When a beam of neutrinos passes through matter, the only interactions it undergoes are those involving the weak force.
To work out the details of the neutrino/weak force experiment, Schwartz met with his former doctoral advisor, Steinberger, and Columbia colleague Leon Max Lederman. The three devised a method for generating an intense beam of neutrinos using the Brookhaven National Laboratory’s new 30 billion- electron-volt alternating gradient synchrotron (AGS). Proton beams from the AGS would be directed at a target of beryllium metal. The collision between beam and target would tear apart beryllium atoms and release an avalanche of subatomic particles, neutrinos among them. The neutrinos thus produced would then be directed through a block of steel where at least some would interact with atoms by means of the weak force.
One issue involved in the experiment was the nature of the neutrinos to be used, as relatively little was known about these particles. When the neutrino was discovered, physicists assumed that it existed in only one form, the form now known as the electron neutrino. For various theoretical reasons, however, Columbia theoretical physicist Gerald Feinberg posed the possibility in 1958 that a second neutrino, associated with mu mesons (muons), which are particles of a different weight, might also exist. The Schwartz- Steinberger-Lederman experiment was designed to determine also the validity of Feinberg’s hypothesis.
By September, 1961, the experiment was under way. Eight months later, a number of neutrinos had been produced, of which fifty-one interactions with matter were observed. In every one of these cases, the interaction was such that it confirmed the existence of a muon neutrino distinct from the electron neutrino. Feinberg’s hypothesis had been confirmed. The 1988 Nobel Prize awarded to Schwartz, Steinberger, and Lederman recognized not only the discovery of the muon neutrino, but also the development of a technique.
Schwartz resigned his post at Columbia in 1966 in order to take a position as professor of physics at Stanford University, where the new two-mile long linear accelerator was available for his research. He remained at Stanford until 1983 when he decided to establish his own software development business, Digital Pathways, Inc. After dividing his time between Stanford and Digital for four years, he resigned the former post and became a full-time businessman. In 1991 Schwartz returned to the academic world by accepting the post of associate director of high energy and nuclear physics at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. He became I. I. Rabi Professor of Physics at the Columbia University in 1994 and retired as Rabi Professor Emeritus in 2000. He spent his retirement years in Ketchum, Idaho, and died on August 28, 2006 at a Twin Falls, Idaho, nursing home after struggling with Parkinson's disease and hepatitis C.