Wigner surmise

In mathematical physics, the Wigner surmise is a statement about the probability distribution of the spaces between points in the spectra of nuclei of heavy atoms. It was proposed by Eugene Wigner in probability theory.[1] The surmise was a result of Wigner's introduction of random matrices in the field of nuclear physics. The surmise consists of two postulates:

Here, where S is a particular spacing and D is the mean distance between neighboring intervals.[2]
  • In a mixed sequence (spin and parity are different), the probability density function can be obtained by randomly superimposing simple sequences.

The above result is exact for real symmetric matrices, with elements that are independent and identically distributed standard gaussian random variables. In practice, it is a good approximation for the actual distribution for real symmetric matrices of any dimension. The corresponding result for complex hermitian matrices (which is also exact in the case and a good approximation in general) is given by

See also

References


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