MINIMUM DIPOLE MOMENT REQUIRED TO BIND AN ELECTRON-MOLECULAR THEORISTS REDISCOVER PHENOMENON MENTIONED IN FERMI-TELLER PAPER ON ANOTHER SUBJECT TWENTY YEARS EARLIER

摘要

Work leading to the discovery of the minimum dipole moment for electron binding, Dmin = 0.639 ea0 (atomic units), by several groups in 1967-68 is described. It was subsequently learned that this number had been published in 1947 by Fermi and Teller, who did not, however, indicate how they derived it. The author has found a numerical solution in Fermi's notebooks from 1946-50 at the University of Chicago Library. Fermi's work is described and presented here with relevant material from his notebooks.nThis article is not about one of the great discoveries in physics. Instead, it tells the history of a small discovery. It should be of some general interest because of the physics involved, and it will also serve to record a rather strange series of events that ended last fall in Fermi's Notebooks at the University of Chicago Library.