Really? Do I need a small contact area? (etched Nickel wire?)
Are there no oxides involved?
Are there magnetic field effects? (that could be cool.)
(I've always wanted a piece of Nickel.)
George Herold Inscribed thus:
Some of the electrodes in tubes and crt's are made from nickel.
That's my whole point! You are not counting photons, you're counting
ionization events which occur with a probability proportional to the
local EM power. At very low intensities, the interference pattern is
there, but it will cause detection events only occasionally. If you
really want to have photons, reserve the word for the amount of energy
that is exchanged between the field and a particle. At least that's
local and essentially instantaneous, doing away with all these
non-locality problems.
Is it really so mysterious that the EM waves created by parametric
down conversion have certain collectively conserved quantities?
A BBO crystal is basically an array of tiny non-linear harmonic-
injection-locked resonators. No need to think in terms of photons
to explain its operation.
Jeroen Belleman- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -
What experiment would demonstrate unequivocally that
light itself is conveyed by discrete photons?
Yes, of course they exist. What they detect are not photons in the
sense of light particles, but discrete charges, electrons, dislodged
from the matter they are made of by the incident light waves. This
occurs with a probability proportional to the power density of the
local EM wave, provided its frequency is above a certain threshold,
characteristic of the detector material. This is by no means
proof that light itself is conveyed in discrete packets.
There exists no source of countable single photons at precisely
defined instants. All they do is to attenuate the light of a
picosecond laser by a sufficient amount to make the detector
produce one or fewer events per laser pulse on average. An APD
has huge gain. A sizable output pulse results from a single
electron-hole pair. The event rate has Poisson statistics,
convolved by the laser pulse shape.
Jeroen Belleman
Is it really so mysterious that the EM waves created by parametric
down conversion have certain collectively conserved quantities?
A BBO crystal is basically an array of tiny non-linear harmonic-
injection-locked resonators. No need to think in terms of photons
to explain its operation.
Jeroen Belleman
Hi Mikko,Hi Jeroen,
I don't want to argue, but rather try to understand.
You have obviously put some thought on the
light-matter interaction puzzles. However, as much
as I dislike the whizzing-ball picture of photons, I'm
wondering whether it is possible to discard the photon
concept (in the sense used by eg. Louisell, or Glauber)
in as radical a way as you seem to suggest.
For example, in superconducting transition edge
sensors the smallest excitation is *much* smaller
than the energy of absorbed photons. Then it must
be some other mechanism than the physics of the
*detector* which forces the EM energy being
absorbed in the lumps of the size omega hbar.
An example is the work of Aaron Miller et al
http://people.bu.edu/alexserg/APL_2003.pdf
From the detector physics point-of-view, they
*would be* capable to see two 0.4eV events, or
three 0.27eV events when shining a 1.55um laser
on the detector - but they never see those, only
single 0.8eV events. Or, more accurately: they
see the Poisson distribution, characteristic
of a coherent state being received.
Now, assume that a detector with a different
composition (say, an APD - although I don't
know offhand if they have sufficient energy resolution)
is detecting the same phenomenon. If it, too, sees
only single 0.8eV events and not any double
0.4eV events, wouldn't it be more natural
to ascribe the 'lumpedness' as a property of
the EM field rather than the property of the detector?
In particular, if you shorten the wavelength of the
illuminating laser (i.e. change something in the
transmitter side), you see that the size of absorbed
energy lumps goes up. Now, detector physics (including
the detectors excitation spectrum) supposedly does
not change, still the lump size it sees changes.
Wouldn't it in this case be more natural to associate
the lump size to either the transmitter or the EM field,
rather than to the detector? (OK, I suppose you can
answer 'it is the transmitter', but then a similar argument
about a transmitter of any physical composition
can be constructed).
I do agree that the photon absorption phenomena *could*
be explained by a postulated physical phenomenon which
always occurs at the light-matter interaction, and which
always gives the lump size of hbar-omega regardless
of the detector physics (solid state, gas ...) and regardless
of the range of energy excitations available in the detector
(semiconductor gap, superconducting gap, continuous
spectrum of thermal excitations...). But isn't such a
postulate much more awkward than accepting the
discreteness to be a feature of the EM field itself (in
the Louisell sense)?
I think single-photon sources *do* exist, but I better not
make that claim too strongly before refreshing my memory
on the subject. There has been a review, I must dig it out...
At least: non-poissonian photon sources *do* exist (e.g
bunched or anti-bunched); whether there are externally
triggerable ones nowadays I'm not sure.
I remember being intriguiged in late-90's by claims that
an ordinary LED, when driven by sub-poissonian current,
would act effectively as single photon emitter. The question
is of course how to create that sub-poissonian current,
in particular when there is the junction capacitance present.
I should dig out those old papers as well...
Regards,
Mikko
Hi Mikko,
Thank you for your comments. APDs have no energy resolution and
no ability to distinguish multi-photon events worth mentioning.
I wasn't aware of Aaron Miller's work, but it looks closely
related to the photo-electric effect, for which a semi-classical
analysis appears to work. It's much better that the photo-electric
effect in the sense that there is no energy lost to the work
function.
Regards,
Jeroen Belleman
I only found one LED emitter reference (from a seminar talk I
gave as a grad student in -97 about QND measurements):http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.71.2006
but that is not the one I'm thinking - authors were japanese
in that paper.
Battery-connection straps are nickel. 1955-1981 Canadian nickels are
nickel.
Ni-NiO-Ni tunnel junctions have barrier heights of about 0.2 eV. This
behaviour in nickel is why nickel plated BNC connectors tend to be flaky
with low level signals.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
hobbs at electrooptical dot nethttp://electrooptical.net
What experiment would demonstrate unequivocally that
light itself is conveyed by discrete photons?
Jan Panteltje said:Albert Einstein got the Nobel prize for it.
Look up which assholes got a peace [not so]nobel prize.
It is a political award, in this case awarded by the Jewish lobby,
That man was clueless and dies clueless, and admitted it before he freed humanity by passing away.
Unfortunately very large parts of humanity are still slaves of his dogma.
Jan Panteltje said:Jan Panteltje said:On a sunny day (28 Mar 2013 11:02:31 GMT) it happened Jasen Betts
What experiment would demonstrate unequivocally that
light itself is conveyed by discrete photons?
Albert Einstein got the Nobel prize for it.
Look up which assholes got a peace [not so]nobel prize.
It is a political award, in this case awarded by the Jewish lobby,
That man was clueless and dies clueless, and admitted it before he freed humanity by passing away.
Unfortunately very large parts of humanity are still slaves of his dogma.
I like feynmanns "explanation" of explanations for things.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/99c/transcript_richard_feynman_on_why_questions/
I think this is the reason why we still get "no such thing as a photon"
or "Einstein was wrong". Otherwise known as "my common sense trumps your
100 years of experimental verifications".
Long time ago 10 years?
I downloaded the Feynman lectures videos that are free on the web.
[...]
So, anyways, after his corpuscles_of_light lecture, it became VERY
clear to me he was a good showman, a nice mathemagician, and probably
an excellent conman,
He also got the wrong result, but only because he could not hack it,
(neither did Einstein) on Le Sage gravity.
There is a distinct possibility that, as he once was in the bomb
program, he was deliberately spreading nonsense, to prevent other
world powers from obtaining the technology being developed in area 51,
or was it 52, probably 53 by now.
Anyways, that together with that other spin-head who's cat was half
dead (Schroedinger) set the stage for the worst physics or most
impressive obfuscation of reality I have ever heard about,
In short, be very careful to take mathematical probabilities for
reality, else somebody may 'prove' you actually are a mouse, at least
for infinitesimal short moments. Multiverses, no end to crap, I have
wormholes in my garden, with real worms.
Jan Panteltje said:What experiment would demonstrate unequivocally that
light itself is conveyed by discrete photons?
Albert Einstein got the Nobel prize for it.
Look up which assholes got a peace [not so]nobel prize.
It is a political award, in this case awarded by the Jewish lobby,
That man was clueless and dies clueless, and admitted it before he freed humanity by passing away.
Unfortunately very large parts of humanity are still slaves of his dogma.
I like feynmanns "explanation" of explanations for things.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/99c/transcript_richard_feynman_on_why_questions/
I think this is the reason why we still get "no such thing as a photon"
or "Einstein was wrong". Otherwise known as "my common sense trumps your
100 years of experimental verifications".
This is not as conclusive as you might think. There is at least one
theory that does not need the concept of photons, written by another
physics Nobel prize winner, Willis Lamb. (In the sense that it
treats light as Maxwell's EM waves, but still ends up with energy
exchanges with matter in chunks of omega * hbar.)
Going against the concepts in vogue easily gets one passed off as
a crank and it requires a solid grasp of things to get one's ideas
accepted. I freely admit I don't have that, but I'm working on it.
On a sunny day (28 Mar 2013 11:02:31 GMT) it happened Jasen Betts
What experiment would demonstrate unequivocally that
light itself is conveyed by discrete photons?
Albert Einstein got the Nobel prize for it.
Look up which assholes got a peace [not so]nobel prize.
It is a political award, in this case awarded by the Jewish lobby,
That man was clueless and dies clueless, and admitted it before he freed humanity by passing away.
Unfortunately very large parts of humanity are still slaves of his dogma.I like feynmanns "explanation" of explanations for things.
I think this is the reason why we still get "no such thing as a photon"
or "Einstein was wrong". Otherwise known as "my common sense trumps your
100 years of experimental verifications".
The debate has been going on for centuries. The photo-electric effect
is often mentioned as 'proof' that light is transmitted as photons.
This is not as conclusive as you might think. There is at least one
theory that does not need the concept of photons, written by another
physics Nobel prize winner, Willis Lamb. (In the sense that it
treats light as Maxwell's EM waves, but still ends up with energy
exchanges with matter in chunks of omega * hbar.)
The trouble with the photon view is that it challenges a number
of other commonly accepted concepts, such as the existence of a
finite maximum velocity of information transfer, the idea that
an object cannot be in several places at once, the belief that
an object has a definite state (the cat is either dead or alive),
and so on. I think it's well worth the effort to look for a
theory that does away with such problems.
Sure, QT gets all the right answers, but I find 'shut up and
calculate' singularly unsatisfying. To me, it has the distinct
flavour of epicycles, which also worked quite well, but lacked
the explanatory power of Newton's gravity. Despite the fact
that it does not tell what gravity *is*, but only how it works.
But there I'm with Feynman, in that all we can do to explain
what something is, is describing its appearance and behaviour.
Going against the concepts in vogue easily gets one passed off as
a crank and it requires a solid grasp of things to get one's ideas
accepted. I freely admit I don't have that, but I'm working on it.
Jeroen Belleman- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -
Some Japanese guys back in the 80s got a couple of dB of amplitude
squeezing by doing that with a diode laser, iirc.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
Jeroen Belleman said:Jan Panteltje said:On a sunny day (28 Mar 2013 11:02:31 GMT) it happened Jasen Betts
What experiment would demonstrate unequivocally that
light itself is conveyed by discrete photons?
Albert Einstein got the Nobel prize for it.
Look up which assholes got a peace [not so]nobel prize.
It is a political award, in this case awarded by the Jewish lobby,
That man was clueless and dies clueless, and admitted it before he freed humanity by passing away.
Unfortunately very large parts of humanity are still slaves of his dogma.
I like feynmanns "explanation" of explanations for things.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/99c/transcript_richard_feynman_on_why_questions/
I think this is the reason why we still get "no such thing as a photon"
or "Einstein was wrong". Otherwise known as "my common sense trumps your
100 years of experimental verifications".
The debate has been going on for centuries. The photo-electric effect
is often mentioned as 'proof' that light is transmitted as photons.
This is not as conclusive as you might think. There is at least one
theory that does not need the concept of photons, written by another
physics Nobel prize winner, Willis Lamb. (In the sense that it
treats light as Maxwell's EM waves, but still ends up with energy
exchanges with matter in chunks of omega * hbar.)
The trouble with the photon view is that it challenges a number
of other commonly accepted concepts, such as the existence of a
finite maximum velocity of information transfer
, the idea that an object cannot be in several places at once, the
belief that an object has a definite state (the cat is either dead or
alive), and so on. I think it's well worth the effort to look for a
theory that does away with such problems.
Sure, QT gets all the right answers, but I find 'shut up and
calculate' singularly unsatisfying. To me, it has the distinct
flavour of epicycles, which also worked quite well, but lacked
the explanatory power of Newton's gravity. Despite the fact
that it does not tell what gravity *is*, but only how it works.
But there I'm with Feynman, in that all we can do to explain
what something is, is describing its appearance and behaviour.
Going against the concepts in vogue easily gets one passed off as
a crank and it requires a solid grasp of things to get one's ideas
accepted. I freely admit I don't have that, but I'm working on it.
Really? That sounds interesting. Do you have a pointer? I'm
aware of his anti-photon paper - is it in the references, maybe?
