Coherence and Interference in the Mössbauer Effect

Authors(s):Harry J. Lipkin Publication:Workshop on New Directions in Mössbauer Spectroscopy (Argonne 1977) Publication Date:1977 Publisher: American Institute of Physics Citation:AIP Conference Proceedings 38, 63 (1977) Link:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.31075

This was the beginning of a study in complementarity coherence and interference which plagues all efforts to understand the Mössbauer effect....If the electron is described in a way which loois sharp to a "position measuring" physicist, it looks fuzzy to a "momentum measuring" physicist. If it looks sharp to a "momentum measuring" physicist, it looks fuzzy to a "position measuring" physicist.

At this point it is worth recalling some of the early history of the Mössbauer effect. I got into the Mössbauer business in 1958 while spending a year at the University of Illinois at Urbana directing Hans Frauenfelder's group doing parity non-conservation experiments in beta decay while Hans was on sabbatical at CERN.