Jack Sarfatti This is hot. If the effect works it's the basis for a new Intel, Microsoft & Apple combined for those smart venture capitalists, physicists & engineers who get into it. This is as close as we have ever come since I started the ball rolling at Brandeis in 1960-61 & then in mid-70's see MIT Physics Professor David Kaiser's "How the Hippies Save Physics". I first saw this as a dim possibility in 1960 at Brandeis grad school and got into an intellectual fight about it with Sylvan Schweber and Stanley Deser. Then the flawed thought experiment published in the early editions of Gary Zukav's Dancing Wu Li Masters in 1979 - pictured in Hippies book tried to do what DK may now have actually done. That is, control the fringe visibility at one end of an entangled system from the other end without the need of a coincidence counter correlator after the fact. Of course, like Nick Herbert's FLASH at the same time late 70's, it was too naive to work and the nonlinear optics technology was not yet developed enough. We were far ahead of the curve as to the conceptual possibility of nonlocal retrocausal entanglement signaling starting 53 years ago at Brandeis when I was a National Defense Fellow Title IV graduate student.
Jack Sarfatti
about an hour ago near San Francisco
On Feb 5, 2013, at 12:28 PM, JACK SARFATTI <
Thanks Nick. Keep up the good work. I hope to catch up with you on this soon. This may be a historic event of the first magnitude if the Fat Lady really sings this time and shatters the crystal goblet. On the Dark Side this may open Pandora's Box into a P.K. Dick Robert Anton Wilson reality with controllable delayed choice precognition technology. ;-)
On Feb 5, 2013, at 10:38 AM, nick herbert <
Demetrios--
Looking over your wonderful paper I have detected one
inconsistency but it is not fatal to your argument.
On page 3 you drop two r terms because "alpha", the complex
amplitude of the coherent state can be arbitrarily large in
magnitude.
But on page 4 you reduce the magnitude of "alpha" so that
at most one photon is reflected. So now alpha cannot be
arbitrarily large in magnitude.
But this is just minor quibble in an otherwise superb argument.
This move does not affect your conclusion--which seems
to directly follow from application of the Feynman Rule: For distinguishable
outcomes, add probabilities; for indistinguishable outcomes, add amplitudes.
To help my own understanding of how your scheme works,
I have simplified your KISS proposal by replacing your coherent states with
the much simpler state |U> = x|0> + y|1>. I call this variation of your proposal KISS(U)
When this state |U> is mixed with the entangled states at the beamsplitters,
the same conclusion ensues: there are two |1>|1> results on Bob's side of the source
that cannot be distinguished -- and hence must be amplitude added.
The state |U> would be more difficult to prepare in the lab than a weak coherent state
but anything goes in a thought experiment. The main advantage of using state |U>
instead of coherent states is that the argument is simplified to its essence and needs
no approximations. Also the KISS(U) version shows that your argument is independent
of special properties possessed by coherent states such as overcompleteness and non-
orthogonality. The state |U> is both complete and orthogonal -- and works just as well
to prove your preposterous conclusion. --- that there is at least one way of making photon
measurements that violates the No-Signaling Theorem.
Thanks for injecting some fresh excitement into the FTL signaling conversation.
warm regards
Nick Herbert
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Jack Sarfatti On Feb 5, 2013, at 1:15 PM, Demetrios Kalamidas <
Nope, no refutation I can think of so far....and I've tried hard.
Demetrios
...See More
33 minutes ago · Like
Joe Ganser Jack do you know a lot of people at CUNY? I take ph.d classes there.
26 minutes ago · Like
Joe Ganser I'm interested in who may do these sorts of topics in NYC
25 minutes ago · Like
Jack Sarfatti Daniel Greenberger!
9 minutes ago · Like · 1
a few seconds ago · Like
On Feb 5, 2013, at 1:15 PM, Demetrios Kalamidas <
Nope, no refutation I can think of so far....and I've tried hard.
Demetrios
On Tue, 5 Feb 2013 13:09:28 -0800
nick herbert <
Thanks, Demetrios. I understand now that alpha can be large
while alpha x r is made small. Also I notice that your FTL signaling scheme seems to work both ways. In your illustration the photons on the left side (Alice) are combined at a 50/50 beam splitter so they cannot be used for which-way information. However if the 50/50 beamsplitter is removed, which-way info is present and the two versions of |1>|1> on the right-hand side (Bob) are now distinguishable
and must be added incoherently, which presumably will give a different answer and observably different behavior by Bob's right-side detectors. So your scheme seems consistent -- FTL signals can be sent in either direction.
This is looking pretty scary.
Do you happen to have a refutation up your sleeve
or are you just as baffled by this as the rest of us?
Nick
Therefore, Nick it is premature for you to claim that the full machinery of the Glauber coherent states, i.e. distinguishable over-complete non-orthogonality is not necessary for KISS to work. Let's not rush to judgement and proceed with caution. This technology, if it were to work is as momentous as the discovery of fire, the wheel, movable type, calculus, the steam engine, electricity, relativity, nuclear fission & fusion, Turing machine & Von Neumann's programmable computer concept, DNA, transistor, internet ...
On Feb 5, 2013, at 12:18 PM, Demetrios Kalamidas <
Hi Nick,
And thanks much for your careful examination of my scheme....however, there appears to be a misunderstanding.
Let me explain:
"On page 3 you drop two r terms because "alpha", the complex amplitude of the coherent state can be arbitrarily large in magnitude."
I drop the two terms in eq.5b because they are proportional to 'r'....and 'r' approaches zero. However, the INITIAL INPUT amplitude, 'alpha', of each coherent state can be as large as we desire in order to get whatever SMALL BUT NONVANISHING AND SIGNIFICANT product 'r*alpha', which is related to the terms I retain.
In other words, for whatever 'r*alpha' we want, lets say 'r*alpha'=0.2, 'r' can be as close to zero as we want since we can always input a coherent state with large enough initial 'alpha' to give us the 0.2 amplitude that we want.
So, terms proportional to 'r' are vanishing, while terms proportional to 'r*alpha' are small but significant and observable.
You state:
"But on page 4 you reduce the magnitude of "alpha" so that at most one photon is reflected. So now alpha cannot be arbitrarily large in magnitude."
The magnitude of 'alpha' is for the INITIAL coherent states coming from a3 and b3, BEFORE they are split at BSa and BSb. It is this 'alpha' that is pre-adjusted, according to how small 'r' is, to give us an appropriately small reflected magnitude, i.e. 'r*alpha'=0.2, so that the "....weak coherent state containing at most one photon...." condition is reasonably valid.
Demetrios
On Feb 5, 2013, at 12:28 PM, JACK SARFATTI <
Thanks Nick. Keep up the good work. I hope to catch up with you on this soon. This may be a historic event of the first magnitude if the Fat Lady really sings this time and shatters the crystal goblet. On the Dark Side this may open Pandora's Box into a P.K. Dick Robert Anton Wilson reality with controllable delayed choice precognition technology. ;-)
On Feb 5, 2013, at 10:38 AM, nick herbert <
Demetrios--
Looking over your wonderful paper I have detected one
inconsistency but it is not fatal to your argument.
On page 3 you drop two r terms because "alpha", the complex
amplitude of the coherent state can be arbitrarily large in
magnitude.
But on page 4 you reduce the magnitude of "alpha" so that
at most one photon is reflected. So now alpha cannot be
arbitrarily large in magnitude.
But this is just minor quibble in an otherwise superb argument.
This move does not affect your conclusion--which seems
to directly follow from application of the Feynman Rule: For distinguishable
outcomes, add probabilities; for indistinguishable outcomes, add amplitudes.
To help my own understanding of how your scheme works,
I have simplified your KISS proposal by replacing your coherent states with
the much simpler state |U> = x|0> + y|1>. I call this variation of your proposal KISS(U)
When this state |U> is mixed with the entangled states at the beamsplitters,
the same conclusion ensues: there are two |1>|1> results on Bob's side of the source
that cannot be distinguished -- and hence must be amplitude added.
The state |U> would be more difficult to prepare in the lab than a weak coherent state
but anything goes in a thought experiment. The main advantage of using state |U>
instead of coherent states is that the argument is simplified to its essence and needs
no approximations. Also the KISS(U) version shows that your argument is independent
of special properties possessed by coherent states such as overcompleteness and non-
orthogonality. The state |U> is both complete and orthogonal -- and works just as well
to prove your preposterous conclusion. --- that there is at least one way of making photon
measurements that violates the No-Signaling Theorem.
Thanks for injecting some fresh excitement into the FTL signaling conversation.
warm regards
Nick Herbert