Gamow

One of the first to show up was Werner Heisenberg, who later won a Nobel Prize. Soon afterward came George Gamow, the fun-loving Russian physicist who sorted out the nuclear reactions that power the stars. Erwin Schrodinger, who also won a Nobel Prize in physics, stopped by to lecture on his new wave theory. Wolfgang Pauli, who would also win a Nobel Prize for his contributions to quantum mechanics, was there, too. 

Fig. 2.1 George Gamow (1904-1968) was bom in Odessa, studied in Leningrad (St. Petersburg) and emigrated in 1934 to the USA, where he taught in Washington, D.C., until 1965 and at the University of Colorado in Boulder for the last three years of his life...

We have learned many things about Gamow s tralphium since 1949. A personal selection includes (1) the abundance of 3He has not changed significantly over 14 Gyr of Galactic evolution, which is remarkable (2) it has not changed not... 

Other related phenomena are a double barrier will induce a transient growth response in still air (very small house 2.5 2.5 7.5 cm) there is no avoidance response the avoidance response is restored if an air current is artificially created in this small house (Johnson and Gamow, 1971). 

It was therefore concluded that ethylene is the gas X postulated by Johnson and Gamow. The concentration necessary to cause 50% inhibition of the bending rate is 30 ppm, which although low is not as low as the concentration of ethylene which effects higher plants [0.1 ppm in pea growth inhibition, Abeles (1973)]. 

The matrix elements in angle brackets contain nuclear factors and (in the case of charged particles) the Coulomb barrier penetration probabilities or Gamow factors, originally calculated in the theory of a-decay, which can be roughly estimated as follows (Fig. 2.7). 

Fig. 2.11. A narrow resonance near or not too far above the Gamow peak. After Rolfs and Rodney (1988). Copyright by the University of Chicago. Courtesy Claus Rolfs.

A narrow resonance not too far from the Gamow peak may supplant the latter (see Fig. 2.11). The reaction rate coefficient is then given in analogy to Eq. (2.53) by... 

Show that the integration procedure over the Gamow peak implies for that peak a 1/e full width of A = (4/ /3)-s/(E0kT),le. essentially twice the geometric mean of Eo and kT. 

The Hot Big Bang theory of the Universe was pioneered by George Gamow, R. A. Alpher and R. C. Herman in the late 1940s and early 50s. They supposed that during the first few minutes of the (then radiation-dominated) Universe, matter was originally present in the form of neutrons and that, after some free decay, protons captured neutrons and successive captures, followed by /3-decays, built up all the elements (Alpher Herman 1950). 

Theory of a-radioactivity by quantum tunnelling (Gamow et al). Cecilia Payne (later Payne-Gaposchkin) applies Saha s equation to the stellar spectral sequence, finding vast predominance of hydrogen and helium, but does not believe her results. 

R. Atkinson and F. Houtermans apply Gamow s theory of potential barrier penetration by quantum tunnelling to suggest how stars can release nuclear energy by synthesis of hydrogen into helium by an (unspecified) cyclic process. 

G. Gamow, R. Alpher and R. Herman develop Hot Big Bang theory and suggest all elements created by neutron captures in early Universe. W. Baade distinguishes two stellar populations. 

Gamow, G. Critchfield, C.L. 1949, Theory of Atomic Nucleus and Nuclear Energy Sources, Oxford Clarendon Press, p. 273. 

P. G. Righetti. The Alpher, Bethe, Gamow of Isoelectric Focusing, the Alpha-Centaury of Electrokinetic Methodologies. I. Electrophoresis, 27(2006) 923-938. 

Gamow, G. (1938). Zusammenfassender Bericht. Kemumwandlungen als Energiequelle der Sterne. Zeitschriftfiir Astrophysik, 16 113-160. 

The particle operators (also called Gamow modes) A, aJ have a strictly exponential time dependence. 

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