Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1951. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis aims to explore the relationship between the science, the philosophy and the esoteric imagination of the American physicist David Bohm (1917-1992). Bohm is recognized as one of the most brilliant physicists of his generation. He is famous for his ‘hidden variables’ interpretation of quantum mechanics. Bohm wrote extensively on philosophical and psychological subjects. In his celebrated book Wholeness and the Implicate Order (1882) he introduced the influential ideas of the Explicate and the Implicate orders that are at the core of his process philosophy. Bohm was also a very close disciple of the Indian teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986), whom he recognized to have had an important influence on his thought. Chapter 1 is a general explanation of what I intend to do, why my research is filling an important gap, introduce the field of Western esotericism as a scholarly subject and suggesting that it offers a fruitful way of approaching the thought of David Bohm. I also explain my research principles and a brief description of the philosophical standpoint from which I am approaching the material. Chapter 2 gives a description of the textual sources I used in my research. This is followed by a comprehensive literature review. Chapter 3 is a biographical essay where I give an account of Bohm’s life, career, works, major ideas and their development, stressing their significance for the development of Bohm’s holistic philosophy and his interactions with the esoteric. This chapter is an introduction to the main ideas of the dissertation. Chapter 4 revisits the genesis of the Causal Interpretation, Bohm’s first attempt to deal with the interpretation of quantum mechanics. I make emphasis on the philosophical developments that gave rise to it. I introduce all the relevant physics and give a detailed explanation of the problem of interpretation and Bohm’s first proposal. Chapter 5 is about the philosophical developments in Bohm’s thought brought by the Causal Interpretation. In particular I examine the influence that G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831) had on Bohm’s thought and explain why I take the view that this is an esoteric influence. Chapter 6 reviews the developments in Bohm’s thought during the 1960’s. I describe Bohm’s search for radically new concepts in physics and his exchanges with several thinkers ending with his encounter with Jiddu Krishnamurti. Chapters 7 and 8 are devoted to the study of Bohm’s philosophy as he elaborated it after 1960. Chapter 7 concentrates on the idea of the Implicate Order and it also studies the Ontological Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, Bohm’s last version of his interpretation effort, which is based on the Implicate Order. In chapter 8 I examine Bohm’s theory of how the mind and the body are connected through a ladder of consciousness formed by a series of Explicate and Implicate Orders, and finishes with an exposition of Bohm’s dialogue technique. In the last chapter I summarize my conclusions. An appendix is included with a brief overview of Bohm’s legacy. All the relevant details about the esoteric currents that Bohm encountered during his life and that are required to understand our argument are introduced as they are needed throughout the main body of the text.

Over the years, people have found Quantum Mechanics to be extremely useful in explaining various physical phenomena from a microscopic point of view. Anderson localization, named after physicist P. W. Anderson, states that disorder in a crystal can cause non-spreading of wave packets, which is one possible mechanism (at single electron level) to explain metalinsulator transitions. The theory of quantum computation promises to bring greater computational power over classical computers by making use of some special features of Quantum Mechanics. The first part of this dissertation considers a 3D alloy-type model, where the Hamiltonian is the sum of the finite difference Laplacian corresponding to free motion of an electron and a random potential generated by a sign-indefinite single-site potential. The result shows that localization occurs in the weak disorder regime, i.e., when the coupling parameter λ is very small, for energies E ≤ −Cλ² . The second part of this dissertation considers adiabatic quantum computing (AQC) algorithms for the unstructured search problem to the case when the number of marked items is unknown. In an ideal situation, an explicit quantum algorithm together with a counting subroutine are given that achieve the optimal Grover speedup over classical algorithms, i.e., roughly speaking, reduce O(2n ) to O(2n/2 ), where n is the size of the problem. However, if one considers more realistic settings, the result shows this quantum speedup is achievable only under a very rigid control precision requirement (e.g., exponentially small control error). / Ph. D.

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The first successful application of quantum mechanics to the problem of metallic cohesion was made by Wigner and Seitz (1938) They appoximated sodium metal by a number of isolated spheres of equal atomic volume and integrated, for various values of the radius of the sphere, the Schrödinger wave equation for the valence electron with the boundary condition that the derivative of the wave function should vanish at the surface of the sphere. To obtain the energy per atom of the metal, they further corrected the energy of the sphere by the mean Fermi energy of free electrons. From the resultant dependence of the energy on the radius of the sphere, they derived the lattice constant, the heat of sublimation per atom, and also roughly the compressibility.

Small diatomic and triatomic 3d transition metal species are excellent model systems for understanding metal-ligand interactions important to larger complexes. Because of the unpaired 3d electrons, these radicals often occur in states with high angular momentum (electron spin, orbital, or nuclear spin). Three questions are particularly relevant to studying monosubstituted 3d metal compounds. What are the fundamental geometric, bonding, and electronic properties? How accurately does currentquantum mechanical theory describe the interactions in high spin states? Assuming these molecules may be present in the interstellar medium, what are the precise transition frequencies that can be used for radioastronomy?To answer these questions, pure rotational spectroscopy has been applied to eleven simple molecules containing 3d transition metals. The small radicals were synthesized in the gas phase and examined in situ. Both direct absorption, submillimeter spectroscopy and Fourier transform microwave spectroscopy were used to cover thefrequency range 8-660 GHz. New synthetic techniques, including oven-insulating methods, use of a longitudinal AC discharge, and emphasis on organometallic precursors, were developed to improve reaction yields.Spectra were recorded for four categories of 3d metal compounds: vanadium molecules, cobalt radicals, zinc species, and several monocyanides. Frequently, the data exhibited signs of perturbations either from low-lying excited electronic states, a common feature with 3d electrons, or from avoided crossings of hyperfine levels. The data were analyzed using effective Hamiltonians, and spectroscopic constants have been determined for rotational, fine structure, and hyperfine interactions. The measurements haveprovided transition frequencies as references for astronomical studies; these values are accurate to within 50 kHz for direct measurements and usually within 100 kHz for frequencies calculated from determined molecular constants.Rotational constants have been used to establish precise molecular geometries. Fine structure and hyperfine data provided insight into 3d metal bonding properties (molecular orbital composition and electron distribution) and structure of electronic state manifolds. In some cases, it was necessary to develop new terms for the Hamiltonian expressions to accurately describe the interactions observed in the spectra. These terms include deperturbation parameters and the first complete description of lambda-doubling for Phi states.

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