THE HELIUM ATOM AND THE MAJORANA SOLUTIONS TO THE TWO–ELECTRON PROBLEM
THE HELIUM ATOM AND THE MAJORANA SOLUTIONS TO THE TWO–ELECTRON PROBLEM

Author(s): Salvatore Esposito, Adele Naddeo
Subject(s): History of ideas, Modern Age, 19th Century, Interwar Period (1920 - 1939)
Published by: Scientia Socialis, UAB
Keywords: Majorana; Helium atom; Variational Method; One–and Two–Electron Atoms;
Summary/Abstract: In 1920s the failure of the old quantum theory by Niels Bohr (1885–1962) and Arnold Sommerfeld (1868–1851) to describe successfully two–electron atoms triggered (at least in part) the development of quantum mechanics. Indeed, once the basic formalism had been established by Werner Heisenberg (1902-1976) and Erwin Schrodinger (1887–1961), early variational calculations produced remarkably good results for the ground state of the helium atom, thus opening the way to a wide acceptance of quantum mechanics. In this paper we present several, related, unpublished results obtained almost simultaneously by Ettore Majorana (1906–1938?), which were derived by resorting to novel methods not yet appeared in the literature.

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