Edouard G Sukhorukov

Edouard G. Sukhorukov
Residence	Bratsk, Russia
Nationality	Russian
Known for	A classical theory of atomic structure presented as a continuation of the Bohr–Sommerfeld model
Scientific career
Fields	Physics, atomic structure, spectroscopy

Edouard G. Sukhorukov (Russian: Эдуард Георгиевич Сухоруков; also transliterated Eduard) is a Russian researcher based in Bratsk, Irkutsk Oblast. With Georgy I Sukhorukov and Roman G Sukhorukov he is a co-author of a classical theory of atomic structure that its authors present as the logical continuation of the Bohr–Sommerfeld theory, tested against the measured ionization potentials and spectral term energies of the elements.

Biography

Very little biographical information about Edouard G. Sukhorukov is available in public sources. The contact details published with the authors' 2000 Russian-language article give his residence as Bratsk (postal code 665709). His patronymic, Georgievich ("son of Georgy"), together with the shared surname, the shared city and the joint authorship, indicates that he and Roman Georgievich Sukhorukov are sons of their co-author Georgy Ivanovich Sukhorukov, the three working together as a family research team. Nothing further about his education, degrees or professional position could be verified.

Scientific work

The theory the three Sukhorukovs advance begins from a complaint about the mathematics of the accepted account of the atom. They point out that the three-dimensional Schrödinger equation cannot be solved in elementary functions even for hydrogen, that for atoms of two or more electrons it admits no exact solution even numerically, and that obtaining the spectral terms of a single complex atom by approximate computation has demanded hundreds of hours, or in some cases years, of computer time. Against this they argue that the Bohr–Sommerfeld picture was set aside too quickly: it was rejected because of the difficulties it encountered with the fine structure of the hydrogen spectrum and with the structure of many-electron atoms, and the Sukhorukovs hold that those particular difficulties can be resolved while keeping Rutherford's planetary model and remaining inside classical physics.

The mechanism by which they do so concerns the propagation of interaction. Interaction propagates at the speed of light, and the finiteness of that speed is attributed to a world medium, an aether. The laws of Newton and Coulomb are then held to be exactly valid only for bodies at rest relative to this medium; for bodies in motion the effectiveness of the interaction depends on their velocity with respect to the medium, following formulae analogous to those of the Doppler effect in optics and acoustics, with a general expression given for the case in which both interacting bodies move. In this way a velocity-dependent correction to the electrostatic force between nucleus and electron replaces the relativistic mechanics that Sommerfeld had grafted onto the Bohr atom, and it is this correction that the authors regard as making the orbital model tractable for complex atoms.

What the theory is measured against is spectroscopic data rather than formal derivation. The authors draw on the large body of measured ionization potentials and of term energies in the optical and X-ray regions, quantities tabulated in the reference literature to eight or ten significant figures. They treat these as the most dependable material in physics, since they are the accumulated product of the whole of experimental atomic spectroscopy, and they report that calculations carried out by the methods derived from their theory agree well with them. The resulting claim is that a closed-form classical scheme can reproduce the same high-precision atomic data that the quantum-mechanical treatment reaches only through prolonged numerical approximation.

Publications

• Г.И. Сухоруков, Э.Г. Сухоруков, Р.Г. Сухоруков, "Новая теория строения атомов" ("New Theory of Atomic Structure"), Наука и техника (n-t.ru), Bratsk, 22 August 2000. Full text (PDF)
• G.I. Sukhorukov, E.G. Sukhorukov, R.G. Sukhorukov, "New Theory of Atomic Structure", Galilean Electrodynamics vol. 16, no. S2 (Special Issue 2), 2005, pp. 23–26
• Г.И. Сухоруков, Э.Г. Сухоруков, Р.Г. Сухоруков, "Познание реальности методами классической физики" ("Cognition of Reality by the Methods of Classical Physics"), Bratsk

Abstracts

• 2005 - "New Theory of Atomic Structure"

External links

• "Новая теория строения атомов" — Russian-language version of the theory at the Nauka i Tekhnika electronic library
• Galilean Electrodynamics — journal in which the English-language paper appeared