Feynman and the visualization of space-time processes van S. Schweber Department of Physics, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts 02254 “The Shelter Islnd conference in 1947 was the stimulus for many of the important advance in quantum field theory following World War II. Schwinger, Feynman, Tomonags, and Dyson were the principal com telus during the tll phase of these developments This article attempts to reconstruct the gens of ‘Feynman's frmolation of quantum electrodynamics, focusing pincipally onthe period from 1947 to 1950. CONTENTS 1. Introduction 9 1 Background “31 AL Childhood “31 B Undergraduate days: MIT 432 Graduate sie Princeton 455 ML, PRD. Dissertation 461 1V. Los Alamos and Going to Cornell 465 AL The war years 465 B._ Coming to Cornell 467 Researches 1946 act V. The Genesis of the Theory am ‘AC Shelter Island and i aftermath am BL Classical cutoffs 7 CC. Elimination of radiation oscilators a D. Theory of positrons ss E. Renormalization a9 VL. The Pocono Conference o VIL The Finishing Touches 95, ‘AL Vacuum polarization 95 Evaluating integrals 8 {C.The January 1949 APS meeting 9 D. Retrospective so VILL Epilogue Style and Visualization 508 ‘Acknowledgments 50s References 50s |. INTRODUCTION During the first few days of June 1947, a conference on “The Foundations of Quantum Mechanics” was held at Ram's Head Inn on Shelter Island at the eastern tip of Long Island.' Six months after the conference, Darrow (1948), who had convened the conference, wrote D. Maclnnes, who had been instrumental in organizing it, T must quote [you]—the words of warm commenda- ton used yesterday by I. I. Rabi anent your Shelter Is- land meeting—he said it has proved much more impor- tant than it seemed even at the time, and would be remembered as the 1911 Solvay Congress is remembered, for having been the starting-point of remarkable new developments "For a history of the Shelter Island conference, see Schweber (1984,1989), Fviows of Mom Physic, Vo. 58 No.2 Api 198 ‘The meeting turned out to be one of the most seminal conferences to be held right after the end of World War If, a conference whose impact was indeed comparable to that of the Solvay Congress of 1911. Just as the Solvay ‘Congress of 1911 set the stage for all the subsequent developments in quantum theory (de Broglie and Langevin, 1912; de Broglie, 1951), Shelter Island provided the initial stimulus for the post-World-War-II develop- ‘ments in quantum field theory: effective, relativistically invariant, computational methods; Feynman diagrams, re- normalization theory. ‘The Shelter Island conference was the second of a series of small conferences that were held under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Between 1946 and 1951, some eleven such conferences were ‘organized—six on topics in physics. All eleven were highly successful and influential (Schweber, 1986). They ‘were the result of a proposal by Duncan Maclnnes of the Rockefeller Institute that the NAS sponsor a series of two- or three-day conferences, which were to have 25 or fewer persons in attendance and which would emphasize discussions rather than the presentation of papers. Only agendas were to be prepared, rather than any definite pro- gram, and a few appointed experts would lead the discus- sions, which were to take place without formality. ‘Three of the first four physics conferences—Shelter Is- land in 1947, Pocono in 1948, and Oldstone in 1949— dealt primarily with topics in theoretical physics? and were attended almost exclusively by theorists’ (Fig. 1). At Shelter Island the results of experiments by Lamb and Retherford (1947) and by Nafe, Nelson, and Rabi (1947) fon the fine and hyperfine structure of hydrogen were presented. These precision experiments, made possible by the wartime advances in microwave technology, indicated that deviations existed from the predictions of the Dirac equation for the spectrum of an electron in a Coulomb 7The fourth was a conference on Low Temperature Physics or- ganized and convened by J.C. Slater and held at Shelter Island from 31 May through 2 June 1948 The caption to Fig. 1 lists those in attendance at the Shelter Island conference. ‘The discussion leaders were Kramers, (Oppenheimer, and Weisskopf. CCopyight ©1906 The American Physical Sociey 440450 Silvan 8. Schweber Feynman's visualization of space-time processes FIG. 1 Participants at the Shelter Island conference (left to right! I. I. Rabi, L. Pauling, J. Van Vleck, W. E, Lamb, G. Bret, D B. Rossi, A. Nordsieek, J. von Neumann, J. A. Wheeler, H. A. A. Pais, J.R, Oppenheimer, D. Bohm, R. P. Feynman, V. F. Weiskopf, H. Feshbach (notin the picture, H. A. Kramers). Courtesy of the Archives of the National Academy of Sciences field. By presenting reliable and precise values for these discrepancies, Lamb and Rabi posed a challenge to the theoretical community that could not be ignored. The re- sult of the Lamb-Retherford experiment became one of, the central and dominant concerns of the meeting. ‘At the conference Kramers, one of the discussion leaders, reviewed the difficulties that had been encoun- tered in quantum electrodynamics since its inception in 1927, and focused principally on the divergences stem- ming from the (infinite) self-energy of a pointlike charged particle, He then outlined his own work (Kramers, 1938,1944) and that of his students, Serpe (1940) and Opechowski (1941), as a way out of the self-energy prob- Jem. He indicated how a theory could be formulated in which all structure effects had been eliminated and described “how an electron with experimental mass behaves in its interaction with the electromagnetic field” (Kramers, 1947). The elimination of structure effects cor- responded to a mass renormalization, in which the self Fey. Mod. Phy, Vol 88 No.2 Ape 808 energy of a charged particle, 8m, was combined with its (bare) mechanical mass mnccy and the sum identified with the observable experimental mass of the particle, ‘meage noch +5m. Kramers's suggestion—that observ ables be expressed in terms of the thus identified experi ‘mental mass of the electron—was the point of departure of Beth's famous calculation of the Lamb shift (Bethe, 1947), which confirmed the feeling expressed at Shelter Island that the effect was a quantum-clectrodynamical The history of the Shelter Island, Pocono, and Oldstone ‘conferences chronicles the development of quantum elec- trodynamies from 1947 to 1950 and tells the story of how ‘Schwinger, Feynman, and Dyson worked out their respec tive contributions—work for which Schwinger and Feyn- ‘man shared the Nobel prize with Tomonaga in 1965. The initial accomplishment of Schwinger in the period 1947—1949 was the formulation of a somewhat unwieldy but coherent and systematic apparatus for doingSilvan S, Schweber: Feynman's visualization of space-time processes 481 quantum-clectrodynamic calculations, in which the ideas of mass and charge renormalization could readily be in- corporated, and the demonstration that these methods could be successfully applied to problems that had experi ‘mental verification [e.g the computation of the electrons anomalous magnetic moment, the Lamb shift, the radia tive corrections to Coulomb’ scattering (Schwinger and Weisskopf, 1948; Schwinger, 1948s, 1948b,1949a,19496)) Feynman (1949b,1945e) provided deep new insights by visualizing electromagnetic processes in @ manner that translated these intuitive representations into simple, ex- tremely efficient and effective calculational methods for computing observable quantities. For the first time one could conceive of doing higher-order calculations routine- Jy. Dyson (1949a,19496) made a major contribution to the understanding of field theories with his examination and classification of the higher-order contributions, his analysis of the structure of quantum field theory to all or- ers of perturbation theory, and his formulation of the concept of renormalizability. Feynman diagrams, in ad- dition to their intuitive appeal, can also be viewed as a representation of the logical content of field theories as stated in their perturbative expansions. Its this aspect of diagrammatics which enabled Dyson to obtain his in- sights into the structure of quantum field theory. He in- icated how Feynman's visual insights could be translated into answers to the question whether charge and mass re- normalization were sufficient to remove all the diver- gences in quantum electrodynamics to all orders of per- turbation theory, and what renormalizability implied for other theories. ‘The present paper focuses on Feynman's contri to these developments. It attempts to reconstruct the genesis of Feynman's formulation of quantum electro- dynamics. It is organized as follows: After some back- ground biographical material (Sec. 11) it outlines Feynman's work for his Princeton dissertation (Sec. 1D Section IV picks up Feynman's researches after the war. Section V details his activities from the Shelter Island conference to the Pocono conference. Section VI recounts presentation at the Pocono conference. Section VI chronicles the final stages of the synthesis. A final sec- tion briefly addresses Feynman's style. |. BACKGROUND "He [Feynman] is a second Dirac, only this time hu- E. P. Wignert 4As quoted by J. R. Oppenheimer in a letter to R. Birge in 1943; in Smith and Weiner (1980), p. 269. Fev Med. Pye, Vol 58, No 2, Apel 188 ‘A. Childhood When I was a child I noticed that a ball in my express ‘wagon would roll to the back when I started the wagon, and when I stopped suddenly it would roll forward. 1 asked my father why, and he answered as. follows “That, nobody knows! People call it inertia, and the gen- eral rule is that anything at rest tends to remain at rest, ‘and a thing in motion tends to keep on moving in the ‘same direction at the same speed. By the way, if you ook closely you will see that when you start the wagon the ball doesn't really move backwards, but it just doesn’t start up from rest a8 fast as does the wagon when you pall it, and itis the back of the wagon which moves to- ‘ward the ball" (Feynman, 19548). Feynman has very vivid memories of his father. One of his earliest and most joyous recollections is that of his father taking him to the Museum of Natural History in “Manhattan and telling him about glaciers: “T can hear his voice, [ashe] explained to me about the ice moving and srinding ...” (Feynman, 19660). His father often played games with him and constantly challenged him by posing problems for him, ‘Ther interaction was primarily verbal, tnd solving problems by talking about them became pattern with Feynman. In their discussions, his father Stressed that facts per se were not important; what mat- tered was the process of finding things out. ‘Skepticism, disrespect for authority were other traits that his father inculcated in him. But his father also got him the Ency- clopedia Britannica, and the young Feynman avidly read through many ofits entries. Feynman recals with sad- ness his shock as a young teenager when he discovered that his father’s answers to his mathematical and scientif- ‘ic questions were no longer adequate. Feynman's father, Melville, immigrated to the United ‘States from Russia as a boy of 5 and grew up in Patch- ‘gue, Long Island. Upon graduating from high school he enroled in a homeopathic medical instiute, but chose not to practice. Feynman's mother, Lucille Phillips, came from a well-to-do family and attended the Ethical Culture School in New York, but did not goto college thereafter. She was a bright and lively person, and she was respon- sible for the cheery atmosphere that permeated the Feyn- man household. She never worked for money, but devot- co her time toa variety of charitable causes J. Feynman, 1984), During Feynman's childhood, his father was in- volved in various business undertakings, but he was not very successful in any of them. Financial difficulties were responsible forthe family’s moving from Far Rock away to Cedachurst and back agtin to Far Rockaway However, during the 1930s the financial situation gradu ally improved and the family became relatively well off (. Feynman, 1985). Richard Phillips Feynman was born on 11 May 1918, ‘A younger brother, bor when Feynman was 4 or 5, died shortly after birth. The other member of the family is sister, Joan, some nine years younger than Richard Feynman attended both junior and senior high school in Far Rockaway and was fortunate to have some very gift