The neutrino theory of light

Abstract

The standpoint assumed by Jordan is the following. Before the radioactive processes revealed the probability of the existence of the neutrinos, the only experimentally known wave fields were those which appear now as pure light fields. They turn out to be only a limiting case of a very much larger multitude of possible fields, which contain free (not compensated) neutrinos. The validity of this hypothesis could be experimentally tested by a study of a possible influence of radiation fields on the β -decay. If it is true that the β -emission is accompanied by an emission of a neutrino there should be an influence of an external neutrino field on the β -emission. But since light fields are nothing than neutrino fields (with neutrino pairs) we should also expect an influence of light radiation on the β -decay. The law of this interaction has yet to be calculated. We wish to make another remark. Quantum mechanics was started by replacing the Fourier amplitudesqk e²piv o ^kt of co-ordinate functionq(t) by matrix elements with two indieesqkl e2piv kl t. In analogy, one could expect that in a quantum field theory the Fourier elementsqk e²piv o k(t-x/c) of a quantity representing a progressive waveq(t - x/c) should be replaced by matrix elementsqkl e²piv kl(t-x/c). Here, as in quantum mechanics, one should expect the combination law v + vlm = vkm.