Systematic Induction and Parsimony of Phenomenological Conservation Laws
Abstract
Selection rules in the form of conservation laws are sometimes postulated in order to explain the non-observation of certain reactions in elementary particle physics. One way to devise selection rules is by induction: data on observed and non-observed reactions are used to induce phenomenological selection rules directly from experience. This article describes a systematic procedure to carry out direct induction of selection rules and quantum properties from reaction data. The procedure has been implemented as a computer program and applied to historical data on the discovery of strangeness, with interesting results. Experience with the program also led to the conjecture and proof that, given any reaction data whatsoever that can be accounted for by selection rules of conservation, exactly one selection rule is sufficient, unless additional constraints are stipulated.
BibTeX
@article{Valdes-Perez-1994-16093,author = {Raul Valdes-Perez and Michael Erdmann},
title = {Systematic Induction and Parsimony of Phenomenological Conservation Laws},
journal = {Computer Physics Communications},
year = {1994},
month = {December},
volume = {83},
number = {2},
pages = {171 - 180},
}