Messages from Ruth Kastner and Saul-Paul Sirag

From: Ruth Elinor Kastner To: JACK SARFATTI Sent: Sat, July 2, 2011 4:45:54 PM
Subject: RE: Devil's Advocate Refutation of Stapp's Proof forbidding entanglement signals in OQT v2 corrected
Ruth: In contrast to Nick I think your calculation presents something concrete to consider.
Jack: Indeed Nick responded inappropriately with polemics. He has always felt competitive with me. If Fig. 9.1 has no value, then why did David  Kaiser even include it and spend several pages in Chapter 9 describing it?
Ruth:  However I would note that the Trace is defined strictly in terms of  an orthonormal basis.
Jack: News to me, but perhaps you are correct. Or, rather, perhaps that should be added as an "axiom" to what is meant by "Orthodox Quantum Theory"?
Ruth: If you want to generalize the trace to something summed over an overcomplete, non-orthogonal basis, you can get apparent nonlocal signalling
even for the usual spin-EPR experiment -- I just did a quick calculation for a singlet state with a rudimentary overcomplete 'basis' consisting of {1/rt2 |z up + x up>, |z down>} and got cross terms also.  Does this represent anything physical meaningful? It seems doubtful.
Jack: If I recall from the USD AAAS Retrocausation Meeting that kind of over-complete basis makes sense in Aharonov's "weak measurement"? But perhaps I am mistaken? Remember they get rare weak values arbitrarily far outside the strong measurement eigenvalue spectral range.
Ruth: Again I think the overcompleteness of the coherent states is related to their indefinite photon number and that you have to have a definite
photon number (or close to it) to get entanglement-- which is why they can get entangled laser beams for small average photon #.
Jack: I am not aware that one cannot have entangled laser beams above a critical laser intensity. Reference? Also we must not confuse laser light with ordinary light of the same intensity. They have very different coherence properties. The laser beam is analogous to the giant wave function of superfluid helium while ordinary light sources of the same intensity is analogous to normal liquid helium. The indefiniteness of photon number is needed for a more definite phase, so I would be surprised if you could not entangle waves that were sharp in phase and unsharp in intensity?  Any good reference on these issues?
I am now somewhat suspicious of my eq. 1.18 perhaps it is mistaken?
In any case, even if this model fails, the issue of over-complete non-orthogonal base states as a loop hole for entanglement signaling inside OQT needs to be more carefully considered. Perhaps it has? References?
Ruth: One can 'predict' trivial nonlocal signalling by calculating a 'trace' wrt an overcomplete basis, and I think that's what going on here. I think the mistake is assuming that you get valid statistical predictions by trying to calculate a 'trace' with a nonorthonormal basis.
Jack: Well at least we agree on this formal point. The issue now is what does Nature say? Experiments would be in order on this issue. As I recall, the actual experiments with entangled double slit systems do not use laser beams?
Ruth
Agreed
From: Saul-Paul and Mary-Minn Sirag To: nick herbert Cc: JACK SARFATTI ; Fred Wolf Sent: Sat, July 2, 2011 5:48:12 PM
Subject: Re: How The Hippies Saved Physics
On Jul 2, 2011, at 5:44 PM, Saul-Paul and Mary-Minn Sirag wrote:
Hi Nick,
    I am reminded that I should have CCd you and Jack and Fred in this email to David Kaiser on his book.
I liked this "Hippie" book very much!
Saul-Paul
------------------
Begin forwarded message:
From: Saul-Paul and Mary-Minn Sirag Date: June 29, 2011 7:05:42 PM PDT
To: David Kaiser Subject: How The Hippies Saved Physics
Hi David,
Thank you for sending a copy of your book!
I have finished reading it, and it is a splendid achievement.
There are a few errors that I have noticed. I could send you a list if you like.
The relationship of the "Hippie" books and Bell's theorem is curious. For example in 1975 two "Hippie" books  were published.
(1) "Space-Time and Beyond" by Bob Toben, Jack Sarfatti, and Fred Wolf (Dutton). On page 134 Sarfatti wrote:
    
    "Bell's criterion for quantum interconnectedness was experimentally tested in the 1973 Harvard doctoral dissertation of A. Holt. H
Holt's result is that the quantum potential (hidden variable interpretation of quantum theory due to de Broglie and Bohm agrees more closely wiith experiment than does the conventional interpretation, which denies the existence of hidden variables."
    This experiment by Holt (advised by Pipkin) at Harvard was consistent with Bell's inequality -- and thus, if verified, would falsify the statistical predictions of quantum mechanics.  In fact, John Clauser, for his second Bell's theorem experiment redid Holt's version of the experiment (using mercury atoms). This was the version of Clauser's experiment that Elizabeth Rauscher, Nick Herbert, and I saw running in 1974.  Jack and Fred and the rest of the FFG saw Clauser's experimental setup after the experiment was completed in 1975.
    This was when Clauser had placed a sign over his experimental apparatus which read: "We have met the hidden variables, and they is us!--Pogo."  Clauser was also amused that Holt had received his Ph.D. under Pipkin for falsifying Quantum Theory.  I happen to have a "samizdat" copy of the paper by R.A. Holt and F.M. Pipkin "Quantum Mechanics vs. Hidden Variables: Polarization Correlation Measurement on an Atomic Mercury Cascade." (This paper was never published.)
    There is a good description of this early experimental work in the 1978 paper, by Clauser and Shimony, which you reference.
(2) "The Tao of Physics" by Fritjov Capra" (Shambhala, Berkeley, 1975).
    
    It is notable that there is no mention of Bell's Theorem in this book. Capra has a brief (but inadequate) description of Bell's theorem in his second book, "The Turning Point: Science, Society and the Rising Culture" (Simon and Schuster, 1982).
Of course by this time "The Dancing Wu Li Masters" by Gary Zukov (Morrow, 1979)
He spells it Zukav.
had been out for three years, with a much more adequate description of Bell's theorem and the experimental results.
Yes, because you Saul-Paul and me and a few others worked closely with Gary on his book and by that time Gary had attended many of the Berkeley Seminars. I wrote the above quote on Holt in 1974 before we had the Berkeley Seminars with Clauser.
Also Bernard d'Espagnat's article, "The quantum theory and Reality" (Scientific American, Nov. 1979) was very influential at that time. I had the amusing experience of asking a Berkeley physics professor (who taught a course on quantum mechanics) if he had read d'Espagnat's article. He said that he had but couldn't understand it!
It is perhaps noteworthy that the first (popular level) book describing Bell's theorem and the experimental results was Robert Anton Wilson's "Cosmic Trigger" (And/Or press, Berkeley, 1977).
Which you especially and I and I suppose Nick helped him with.
All for now;-)
Saul-Paul