Talk:BKS theory

Question
I was always curious about this theory, but never studied it. Is it equivalent to a semiclassical treatment of the EM field and a "full quantum mechanical" atom? Since there was no quantum mechanics yet, what I mean by a "full quantum mechanical atom" is a system which is quantized according by Sommerfeld rule but which has emissions and absorptions according to the Fourier transforms of the classical orbits, a pre-canonical-commutation-relation Kramers-Heisenberg matrix description. If this is what BKS is all about, then there is an accepted modern version: treat atoms quantum mechanically, but they emit and absorb photons probabilistically into an EM field, with no correlations between emission and absorption. If this is how BKS worked, then BKS probably should probably be thought of as a stepping stone to full quantum mechanics as suggested here, not simply as a failed theory.Likebox (talk) 15:57, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

This is an interesting question. I'm unsure about the answer, but I'd say that it's not quite the theory you propose, as it doesn't allow for energy or momentum conservation at the microscopic level, which, I believe was it's primary issue along with lack of proper causality. zipz0p (talk)

Note
The [needs citation] box after the sentence 'It was perhaps more a program than a full physical theory, the ideas that are developed not being worked out in a quantitative way.' is unnecessary. If you even glance through the actual BKS theory paper (ref. 3, N. Bohr, H.A. Kramers, and J.C. Slater, Phil. Mag. 47, 785-802 (1924)), you'll see that the theory is not quantitative in the least (no equations, no direct quantitative predictions). zipz0p (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 17:53, 9 September 2014 (UTC)