In 2025, we'll celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of the development of quantum mechanics, and the United Nations is working towards a declaration of 2025 as the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology (IYQST). The American Journal of Physics will join the celebration with a special issue to kick off the year in January 2025.
The IYQST not only marks 100 years since Erwin Schrödinger developed wave mechanics and Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, and Pascual Jordan developed matrix mechanics. It also celebrates the contributions that quantum mechanics has made to our lives in the past century and will continue to make in the next one. The initiative's website, Quantum2025.org, reminds us that quantum mechanics has contributed to our understanding of “why the sun shines, how magnets work, why atoms stick together in chemical bonds, and how the pattern of galaxies in the universe formed.” Quantum mechanics was central to the development of transistors, lasers, and LEDs, and in the coming years, physicists will be using quantum mechanics to contribute to the UN's development goals of improved health and wellbeing, reduced inequalities, industry and infrastructure innovations, economic growth, climate action, and clean energy.
AJP's special issue will celebrate all these aspects of quantum mechanics. We welcome papers that explain applications of quantum mechanics that can be presented in an undergraduate or graduate-level physics course. Papers on historical developments in quantum mechanics may be appropriate, if they will be interesting to instructors who don't specialize in the history of physics. Of course, we welcome your ideas for how to effectively teach quantum mechanics, quantum computing, and quantum information, and we would be willing to consider those ideas even for teaching at the secondary-school level, since the effort to broaden the teaching of quantum mechanics will need to include contributions by those with experience teaching it at the university level. And as part of the kick-off to a year of celebrations, the issue can include papers supporting outreach efforts to the general public.
Submissions will be due by March 31, 2024. More information on AJP's general policies and submissions procedures can be found at our website, ajp.aapt.org.
Interested in being more involved? Consider serving as a guest editor. Guest editors will oversee the review process and then serve as the first and most careful reader of each paper, providing authors of accepted papers with editing suggestions to make them as readable and useful as possible. Since this issue will cover a broad range of topics, we'll need editors with an equally broad range of expertise; therefore the tasks may be shared amongst several guest editors. Please contact me to express interest or ask for more information: [email protected]. Note that a modest stipend is available and that guest editors may also submit papers to the special issue.
To learn more about special issues, be sure to read our most recent special issue (September 2023) on teaching the physics of the environment, sustainability, and climate change, either in print or on our website, https://pubs.aip.org/aapt/ajp, and, while you're there, also look at the parallel special collection in The Physics Teacher: https://pubs.aip.org/aapt/pte. I hope it will inspire your efforts in that area as well as showcase the value of a special issue. I'm looking forward to reading your submissions!
Beth Parks, Editor, AJP
