The Formula Carried Over Whole: Kramers and Heisenberg's Translation Rule and the Half of Dispersion Nobody Derived

In 1925 Kramers and Heisenberg produced the dispersion formula for radiation scattered by an atom — the expression from which the scattering of light by matter has been computed ever since — by a method with no precedent: they took the classical oscillator formula over term by term and replaced each classical Fourier amplitude by a transition amplitude between stationary states, the "virtual oscillators." The replacement was asserted from the correspondence principle, a demand of asymptotic agreement, not derived from any mechanics of the atom then in existence. This paper evaluates the rule in the formula's own currency. On a declared two-level atom the bench returns the translated cross-section whole and then with its anti-resonant term dropped — the one-term reading a later age performs silently: at zero frequency the translated amplitude is 2.000000 against the truncation's 1.000000, a factor of 4.000000 in the static cross-section, and the anti-resonant term carries 69.750000\% of the full cross-section at a tenth of the resonance frequency, falling to 0.997475\% at resonance itself. The two halves of the formula are one classical term and one asserted term; every dispersion number since 1925 uses both. Census headline, unchanged: NOT SOLVED / PARTIAL · producing-count 0.

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Publication Details

Journal
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Published
2026-11-06
DOI
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.24015515
Primary Topic
Atomic and Molecular Physics
Type
preprint
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preprint

The Formula Carried Over Whole: Kramers and Heisenberg's Translation Rule and the Half of Dispersion Nobody Derived

William Alexander Aldred
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Atomic and Molecular Physics
preprint

The Formula Carried Over Whole: Kramers and Heisenberg's Translation Rule and the Half of Dispersion Nobody Derived

William Alexander Aldred
preprint en

Abstract

In 1925 Kramers and Heisenberg produced the dispersion formula for radiation scattered by an atom — the expression from which the scattering of light by matter has been computed ever since — by a method with no precedent: they took the classical oscillator formula over term by term and replaced each classical Fourier amplitude by a transition amplitude between stationary states, the "virtual oscillators." The replacement was asserted from the correspondence principle, a demand of asymptotic agreement, not derived from any mechanics of the atom then in existence. This paper evaluates the rule in the formula's own currency. On a declared two-level atom the bench returns the translated cross-section whole and then with its anti-resonant term dropped — the one-term reading a later age performs silently: at zero frequency the translated amplitude is 2.000000 against the truncation's 1.000000, a factor of 4.000000 in the static cross-section, and the anti-resonant term carries 69.750000\% of the full cross-section at a tenth of the resonance frequency, falling to 0.997475\% at resonance itself. The two halves of the formula are one classical term and one asserted term; every dispersion number since 1925 uses both. Census headline, unchanged: NOT SOLVED / PARTIAL · producing-count 0.

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Atomic and Molecular Physics
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