WsmFotonTest
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Describe WsmFotonTest here.
NicoBenschop: Testing for Foton vs. Continuous wave-light
1. http://www.wikiworld.com/wiki/index.php/WsmFotondecay
2. http://ophelia.princeton.edu/~page/single_photon.html : one foton/2km
3. http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/SEhelp/ApolloLaser.html : Moon distance
4. http://members.chello.nl/~n.benschop/electron.pdf : Electron = Closed Foton
4.a http://members.chello.nl/~n.benschop/elecfig1.gif : Doughnut figure of foton
5. http://members.aol.com/cepeirce/a1.html : Wave animation (QuickBasic program)
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(1) - 18may04 - Symmetric Radial Radiation: fotons or waves?
Take an extremely weak and pulsed (monochrome) light source that radiates equally in all directions, or to simplify: in a horizontal plane. And place in a circle around it as many detectors as you can, at equal distance from the source - but e.g. at least four - equally distributed around the circle.
The intensity of the source, and the pulse duration, should be such as to generate an amount of light energy equivalent to one 'photon' per two detectors: E n/2 x h/lambda per light pulse if n detectors are used, where lambda wavelength of the used monochrome light. To reduce noise, this experiment should be done preferably in vacuum, and in a very cold and dark environment.
If the detectors excite all at the same time, for every pulse, then it is likely that rotational symmetric wave propagation took place, and no quanta ('photons'). However, if no such coincidence occurs, although on average the detectors will fire equally often, one of each pair, then photons as quanta are much more likely. - Comments?
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(2) - 4june04 - "Fast Pulsed Beam-sweep" : A very weak laser beam is pulsed (15 nanosecond active) with a Kerr cell shutter, and reflect it via a vibrating quartz crystal of say 30 MHz (period = 33 nanosecond) onto a photo sensitive film.
With 300 Mm/s light speed, 10 m is travelled in one crystal vibration period, so 5 m per half period left-to-right sweep. This beam sweep is projected onto a photo sensitive film strip as wide as the sweep reaches (width depends on crystal vibration amplitude and on its distance to the photo film).
Reduce the light intensity to an energy equivalent to less than (say half of) n adjacent photons (n x h.f Planck quanta) required to cover the screen in one pulsed sweep, where f = laser light freq. To prevent over-writing, record per single pulse. If a continuous intensity is recorded on the screen (assuming film sensitivity is better than one 'photon' energy) then light is a continuous wave process, and photons probably do not exist. Otherwise, separate photon images should be recorded on the film screen. - Comments welcome.
(3) - 9jun04 - Focusing waves: "impulse response" of a medium.
>> (Nico wsm-2985) >> A light point source in the focus point of a parabolic >> reflector yields a parallel wave front moving out, >> with a diameter equal to that of the reflector. >> This seems to contradict Huygens principle: each oscillating >> wave part generates concentric expanding waves around it. >> >> But water waves (say on the surface of a pond) behave not >> as light. Waves generated by a stone falling into the water >> reflect from a similar formed parabolic wall: their reflection >> beyond the parabolic edge does behave like Huygens' principle, >> and 'diffuses' in all directions (i.e. not propagating in a >> parallel wave front of fixed width). Why this different behavior? >> I doubt if longitudinal vs. transversal wave types explains this. > > (CHT) I'd suggest two factors: > (a) much longer wavelength for water, > . . . so that interference effects matter, and: > (b) nonlinearity of water as a medium. -- Cheers, Caroline.
Possibly both. I think a particle/wave ratio is involved here, which determines how well a pulse, injected into a medium, can remain focused. Namely: a directional focused pulse (like a laser beam) will remain focused and not diffuse (re Huygens) the more 'particle-like' it is, while a more wave-like beam diffuses immediately into concentric circles (or -spheres) by Huygens.
I'd call such diffusion pattern the 'impulse response' of the medium. The pulse is of the same material as the medium, so a water pulse into water, and air pulse into air (air gun), or a light pulse into ether (laser). Sensors in a circle, or sphere, around the source can pick up the amplitude and timing of received pulse components (as for qualification of loudspeakers and antennas): call it a medium's particle/wave "impulse response".
The more particle-like the medium, the sharper focused its impulse response (spatially) is, while a more wave-like medium would produce an equal amplitude circular reception pattern (flat Huygens spectrum). Comments?
Ciao, Nico -- http://members.chello.nl/~n.benschop http://home.iae.nl/users/benschop
Heisenberg showed photons are emitted at discrete multiples of the Planck action and Einstein showed they are received as such. Electrons emit and receive, exchanging momentum only at discrete values, manifesting a kinetic velocity between each other. If there is not a one to one correspondence between sending and receiving electrons, then we should witness no entanglement between such events, yet we do.
Do you disagree that the electrons participating in an exchange of momentum are entangled quantum systems? - - To disprove this you would need to show an electron affecting two other electrons at the same time.
Do you doubt momentum comes in only integer multiples of the Plank action? - - To disprove this you would need to show round off errors in the frequencies exchanged or somewhere that fractional Plank action is manifest.
Does the experiment distinguish these? It seems so. Call it information or waves but how it behaves is what we need to distinguish.
I do like your experimental setup but need to think a bit on what results mean, feeling too stupid at the moment to interpret them. I'd like your thoughts anyhow, if you have time. ...time for my train...
-- JimScarver
Well, I am not sure about quantization in both send and receive mode. But an orbit change in an atom-shell seems a quantized generator of photons to me. I tend to believe the 'particle' character of a travelling photon to be the motion (translation) of an oscillation center ... similar to the above ref (5) of a wave animation, with 'Doppler' effect to explain the eccentricity. The 'wave' character is the Huygens 'circles' (spheres) propagating outwards.
Re Entanglement: I'm no expert here, but it seems to my simple intuition that if two elementary entities (electron or photon pair) are generated with a correspondence relation (some entanglement or coupling), and they move apart - then it makes no sense to me this correspondence remains intact independent of their (increasing) distance==== At least an inverse quadratic law should hold, with asymptotically vanishing correspondence ... hence no coupling at great distance. But theorists tell me the Hilbert-space involved is not a metric space, so 'distance' is not defined! . . . That is pure math, and no physics to me ;-( Somehow their model is missing something essential...
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BTW: in ref(5) a QBasic program source is given, which I'd like to run myself, and then change it to animate reflection against a parabola - and see what effect particle/wave (osc.center / Huygens.circles) have on 'spill-over' at the parabola reflector edge.
I downloaded a QBasic compiler but I don't know how to compile/link/run it - do you have any clue to that, or a link explaining this? Thanks.
-- NicoBenschop
Thanks Nico. The real issue here is that the only thing you can you measure are individual electrons receiving the exact energy of the signal either with CCD detectors or catalyzed reaction of molecules on the film sensitive to that frequency. There is no way to see any continuous result. Did I miss something? -- JimScarver
Well, according to Caroline Thompson (WSM) you miss everything ;-)
By her, all is only continuous - http://freespace.virgin.net/ch.thompson1/
I must say, as digital circuit engineer/theorist (#) I prefer the digital / quantum viewpoint, but by my overriding principle of (dynamic) 'balance' I see some value in the continuous wave view, which - however - I do not think to be all-inclusive.
My view on this world is a hierarchy of levels of description - say bottom up - which are alternatively discrete and continuous models (). Here a model is not the Truth, or Reality, but just one way of seeing, and interacting with, our environment. The type of bottom layer (discrete or continuous) is arbitrary, and in fact is a matter of taste - depending on your education, or other chance factors. So discussions about the fundaments of 'Reality' and 'Truth' are guaranteed to continue forever, wouldn't you agree? After all, one must do something here, eh? Just check out the history of philosophy, science and math, to see the repetitive pattern (now Stephen Wolfram comes with his Cellular Automata Universe in "Another Kind of Science", that's his angle / taste / model as a computer scientist: Democritus 'atoms' revisited - not only in matter but also in space and time ...) - - - Hence I joined the discussion group WSM a few months ago, they have both proponents (Quantum and* Continuous-Waves) making an interesting brew.
Re(*): http://home.iae.nl/users/benschop/finite.htm
and (2) "Re: Mathematical Continuum and Discrete Models of Space" in:
http://home.iae.nl/users/benschop/math-use.htm
Re(#): http://home.iae.nl/users/benschop/preface.htm -- NicoBenschop
I agree that the actual mechanisms at the bottom layer cannot be determined absolutely. I have a model of discrete interacting differences which appears to correspond nicely to the quantum, but one can always say there is some weird kind of continuity behind it.
The issue I am raising has to do with what we measure, not our model of the universe.
When we point a laser at the reflector on the moon a few photons a second reach our detectors all with the energy of the electron oscillations of the laser. While the number of photons is reduced, lowering the intensity, there is no reduction in the energy of the individual photons as suggested by Einsteins photon electric effect.
How would you expect any different result? A CCD array or film will be sensitive to certain energies or frequencies which would presumably match your source frequency. The number of CCDs triggered or molecules catalyzed by the energy will be small due to the low intensity. Is there any other possible measurement you might expect? I see no way we might measure anything that is continuous. --JimScarver
I think so too: the generation side (of photons) is quantized, while the receiving end (detection) does the reverse: incoming energy (EM-field) brings certain atoms (in CCD or foto-film material) in an excited orbit/state. We'll never know - or able to measure - whether ALL incoming energy (assumed to be continuous and not some quantum multiple) is used for detection. It may well be a round off effect at the detection side - making us believe it is quantized there as well (Caroline Thompson's argument;-) - with the rounded-off energy warming up the environment...
I guess essentially we agree, it may be an undecidable issue, which is fine with me: at the bottom level - which is reached now - it is a matter of taste or expedience which model (discrete or continuous) one prefers. The vibrating crystal as reflector for a pulsed laser beam may produce a beam sweep (see above item (2) ) with a resulting trace on the film that is still ambiguous about particle/wave: I'm just curious (although seemingly simple, it's not so easy to perform). BTW: The Netscape logo - a beam-sweeping lighthouse - triggered my idea for test (2) ;-) -- NicoBenschop