A model of extended electrons

Department of Physics
The University of Liverpool

We present a space-time model of extended electrons, which is formulated in terms of geometric algebra. Wave properties of the electron are referred to mass density oscillations. We provide a comprehensive and non-statistical interpretation of wavefunctions, referring them to mass density components and internal field components. It is shown that these wavefunctions comply with the Schrodinger equation, for the free electron as well as for the electron in electrostatic and vector potentials.
Spin-properties of the electron are referred to intrinsic field components and it is established that a measurement of spin in an external field yields exactly two possible results. However, it is also established that the spin of free electrons is isotropic. Furthermore, the model agrees with the results of standard theory concerning the hydrogen atom.

Werner A. Hofer, Unconventional approach to orbital-free density functional theory derived from a model of extended electrons, Found. Phys. 41, 754-791 (2011).

Werner Hofer was born in Salzburg, Austria. He undertook his scientific training in Vienna, at the University of Technology, where he graduated in 1997 in theoretical surface science. He obtained his PhD at the same university in 1999, developing transport simulations for scanning tunneling
microscopes. From 1999 until 2002 he worked at University College London on organic-semiconductor interfaces. In 2002 he was appointed to a Lectureship in the Departments of Physics and Chemistry at the University of Liverpool, was promoted to a Readership in 2005, and obtained a Personal Chair, still jointly in both Departments, in 2006. In 2010 he was made Director of the newly established Stephenson Institute for Renewable Energy, a position he still holds. Apart from publishing work in condensed matter theory, theoretical chemistry, transport theory and surface science, he has also been working, since 1996, on fundamental problems in quantum mechanics. The first peer reviewed paper in this field, dealing with the idea of extended electrons and photons, was published in Physica A in 1998. Due to the inability, to actually account for a change of wave-properties of electrons during accelerations, he abandoned this work for more than ten years, coming back to it only late in 2009 with a new ansatz. Since then the theoretical framework has gradually grown and now includes not only the paper cited above, presenting a new model of electrons, but also papers on the question whether the density of electron charge is a real or a statistical quantity, and the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox in the shape of Aspect-type measurements.
Both papers are submitted and currently under review. They can be obtained in the physics archive under:

arXiv:1105.3914, Is the density of electron charge a statistical quantity?
arXiv:1109.6750, The origin of non-locality in Aspect-type experiments.