Originally done with (neutral) silver atoms in 1921, but even clearer theoretically was the hydrogen reproduction in 1927 by T. E. Phipps and J. B. Taylor.
The hydrogen experiment was apparently harder to do and the result is less visible, TODO why: physics.stackexchange.com/questions/33021/why-silver-atoms-were-used-in-stern-gerlach-experiment
The Stern-Gerlach Experiment by Educational Services, Inc (1967)
Source. Featuring MIT Professor Jerrold R. Zacharias. Amazing experimental setup demonstration, he takes apart much of the experiment to show what's going on.www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DxlkxA82FM COVID-19 Symposium: Entry of Coronavirus into Cells | Dr. Paul Bates
In the case of the Schrödinger equation solution for the hydrogen atom, each orbital is one eigenvector of the solution.
Remember from time-independent Schrödinger equation that the final solution is just the weighted sum of the eigenvector decomposition of the initial state, analogously to solving partial differential equations with the Fourier series.
This is the table that you should have in mind to visualize them: en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Atomic_orbital&oldid=1022865014#Orbitals_table
- Physics from Symmetry by Jakob Schwichtenberg (2015) page 72
- physics.stackexchange.com/questions/172385/what-is-a-spinor
- physics.stackexchange.com/questions/41211/what-is-the-difference-between-a-spinor-and-a-vector-or-a-tensor
- physics.stackexchange.com/questions/74682/introduction-to-spinors-in-physics-and-their-relation-to-representations
- www.weylmann.com/spinor.pdf
Student Friendly Quantum Field Theory by Robert D Klauber (2013) by 
Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16Like the rest of the Standard Model Lagrangian, this can be split into two parts:
- spacetime symmetry: reaches the derivation of the Dirac equation, but has no interactions
- add the internal symmetry to add interactions, which reaches the full equation
Deriving the qED Lagrangian by Dietterich Labs (2018)
Source. As mentioned at the start of the video, he starts with the Dirac equation Lagrangian derived in a previous video. It has nothing to do with electromagnetism specifically.
He notes that that Dirac Lagrangian, besides being globally Lorentz invariant, it also also has a global invariance.
However, it does not have a local invariance if the transformation depends on the point in spacetime.
He doesn't mention it, but I think this is highly desirable, because in general local symmetries of the Lagrangian imply conserved currents, and in this case we want conservation of charges.
To fix that, he adds an extra gauge field (a field of matrices) to the regular derivative, and the resulting derivative has a fancy name: the covariant derivative.
Then finally he notes that this gauge field he had to add has to transform exactly like the electromagnetic four-potential!
So he uses that as the gauge, and also adds in the Maxwell Lagrangian in the same go. It is kind of a guess, but it is a natural guess, and it turns out to be correct.
There are unlisted articles, also show them or only show them.