Planck's Other Quanta: Corpuscular Electrodiffusion

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that applying Bäcklund transformations to electrodiffusion equations results in quantized ionic fluxes, revealing that these fluxes are composed of discrete electric charge quanta.

Contribution

It introduces a novel application of Bäcklund transformations to electrodiffusion equations, showing they produce quantized ionic fluxes and identifying these fluxes as electric charge quanta.

Findings

Repeated transformations lead to quantized ionic fluxes.

A specific solution shows fluxes are made of electric charge quanta.

The approach links nonlinear equations to discrete charge transfer.

Abstract

When B\"acklund transformations are applied repeatedly to any solution of the nonlinear equations describing electrodiffusion through a liquid junction separating two infinite well-stirred layers, they give rise to quantized ionic fluxes across the junction. A particular exact solution is shown to imply that these fluxes consist of quanta of electric charge.