Electrons in Atoms: Do They Have a Current?

  • Thread starter Thread starter rgshankar76
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Atoms Electrons
rgshankar76
Messages
12
Reaction score
0
Do the electrons revolving around the nucleus have a current associated with them?
 
Physics news on Phys.org
rgshankar76 said:
Do the electrons revolving around the nucleus have a current associated with them?

Yes of course.
The charge current is
j^{\mu}(x^{\mu})=-e\bar{\Psi}_{\alpha}(x^{\mu})}(\gamma^{\mu})^{\alpha}\\_{\beta} \Psi^{\beta}(x^{\mu})
,where Psi bar and Psi are solutions of the Dirac equations for a Coulomb potential.Compute this 4 vector and compare to the one found for a free Dirac field.

Daniel.

PS.Chose the Dirac-Pauli representation of the Clifford algebra.
 
Except - of course - that electrons haven't "revolved" around the nucleus in almost a hundred years now...
 


And of course its a cloud, and we can't be sure of its energy state, and that its so fantastically complicated we've only produced clouds for the most basic elements, apart from that it's fine:-)
 
rgshankar76 said:
Do the electrons revolving around the nucleus have a current associated with them?

You should say "the orbital angular momentum of electrons causes them to have an orbital magnetic dipole moment, just as if they were revolving around the nucleus.

It's OK to say that electrons have orbital angular momentum, (see for instance

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/quantum/qangm.html

but it's in questionable taste to say that they actually revolve. (You can get away with saying they act as if they revolve if you don't actually say that they revolve, though). Similarly, it's OK to say that an electron iin free space has momentum, it's questionable to say that it is "moving" or has a "velocity" (well, sometimes you can get away with saying that an electron in free space has a velocity, but other times someone will complain when you say that).

Hope this helps :-)
 
I was told that the electron can be a particle or frequency around the nucleus
 
From the BCS theory of superconductivity is well known that the superfluid density smoothly decreases with increasing temperature. Annihilated superfluid carriers become normal and lose their momenta on lattice atoms. So if we induce a persistent supercurrent in a ring below Tc and after that slowly increase the temperature, we must observe a decrease in the actual supercurrent, because the density of electron pairs and total supercurrent momentum decrease. However, this supercurrent...
Hi. I have got question as in title. How can idea of instantaneous dipole moment for atoms like, for example hydrogen be consistent with idea of orbitals? At my level of knowledge London dispersion forces are derived taking into account Bohr model of atom. But we know today that this model is not correct. If it would be correct I understand that at each time electron is at some point at radius at some angle and there is dipole moment at this time from nucleus to electron at orbit. But how...
Back
Top