It's clear that DK's scheme won't work - nor will any scheme that is based on unitary linear orthodox quantum theory using orthogonal base states.
However, concerning Valentini's, Josephson, Weinberg, Stapp & my different & independent from from DK's approaches: while the trace operation to get expectation values of observables on quantum density matrices is invariant under unitary transformations of the base states which preserve orthogonality, that is not true for the transformation from an orthogonal Fock basis to the non-orthogonal Glauber coherent state basis, which is clearly a non-unitary transformation that is OUTSIDE the domain of validity of orthodox quantum theory. I think many Pundits have missed this point?

Hawking's former assistant Bernard Carr spells this out clearly in Can Psychical Research Bridge the Gulf Between Matter and Mind?" Bernard Carr Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, Vol 59 Part 221 June 2008

Begin forwarded message:

From: nick herbert <quanta@cruzio.com>
Subject: Re: AW: AW: More on the |0>|0> term
Date: June 14, 2013 11:14:57 AM PDT
To: Suda Martin <Martin.Suda.fl@ait.ac.at>


Thank you, Martin.
I finally get it.
My confusion lay in the attribution of the short calculation below.
I thought this calculation (which leads to rA) was due to Gerry.

Instead it is a calculation done by Gerry but attributed to DK.
It was not a calculation that DK ever carried out but
arose from Gerry taking Gerry's FULL CALCULATION,
applying the Kalamidas approximation
and getting an incorrect result.

The correct result is Zero
on which you and Gerry agree.

So if Kalamidas would have carried out the calculation this way
he would have gotten an incorrect answer.

I hope I have now understood the situation correctly.

But Kalamidas did not carry out the calculation that Gerry displays.
DK did not start out with the FULL CALCULATION and then approximate.

DK starts with an approximation and then calculates.

DK starts with an approximation and carries out a series of steps which all seem to be valid
but whose conclusion is preposterous. Furthermore the approximation (weak coherent states)
is an approximation used in dozens of laboratories by serious quantum opticians without
as far as I am aware leading to preposterous or impossible conclusions.

Therefore it seems to me that the calculation below is another nail in the Kalamidas coffin, BUT
THE BEAST IS STILL ALIVE.

1. No one yet has started with Kalamidas's (approximate) assumptions, and discovered a mistake in his chain of logic.

2. No one yet has started with Kalamidas's (approximate) assumptions, followed a correct chain of logic and shown that FTL signaling does not happen.

Martin Suda came the closest to carrying out problem #2. He started with the Kalamidas (approximation) assumptions and decisively proved that all FTL terms are zero. But Martin's proof contains an unphysical |0>|0> term that mars his triumph.

I am certain that the Kalamidas claim is wrong. The FULL CALCULATION refutations of Ghirardi, Howell and Gerry are pretty substantial coffin nails. But unless I am blind there seems still something missing from a clean and definitive refutation of the Kalamidas claim. See problems #1 and #2 above.

I do not think that Nick is being stubborn or petty in continuing to bring these problems to your attentions. I should think it would be a matter of professional pride to be able to bring this matter to a clean and unambiguous conclusion by refuting Kalamidas on his own terms.

Thank you all for participating in this adventure whatever your opinions.

Nick Herbert


On Jun 14, 2013, at 3:29 AM, Suda Martin wrote:

Nick,

Thank you for comments!

I would still like to explain my short considerations below a bit more precisely, anyway. I feel there was perhaps something unclear as regards my email (12th June), because you wrote "you were confused".

I only considered the following:

DK disclosed a calculation (see attachment) which is completely wrong because he made a mathematical limit (see first line, where he omitted the term ra^{+}_{a3}) which is absolutely not justifiable here (just as CG mentioned, see below) because both parts are equally important if you make the expectation value properly. If you take both parts you get exactly zero: alpha^{*}(tr^{*}+rt^{*})=0.
So one does not obtain a quantity like (r alpha)^{*}.

That’s all. There is absolutely no discrepancy between me and CG.

Nice regards,
Martin




-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: nick herbert [mailto:quanta@cruzio.com]
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 12. Juni 2013 23:33

Betreff: Re: AW: More on the |0>|0> term

"And again, the notion that an alleged approximate calculation (I say "alleged" because as with everything else there are correct and incorrect approximate calculations) based on a weak signal coherent state somehow trumps an exact computation valid for any value of the coherent state parameter, is, well, just insane. If you want to see where things go wrong just take more terms in the series expansions. Add up enough terms and, viola, no effect! One can't get much more specific than that." --Christopher Gerry

Actually, Chris, one can get much more specific than that by explicitly displaying the Correct Approximation Scheme (CAS) and showing term by term than Alice's interference vanishes (to the proper order of approximation).

Absent a correct CAS and its refutation these general claims are little more than handwaving.

Produce a CAS.
Refute it.

Is anyone up to this new Kalamidas challenge?
Or does everyone on this list except me
consider deriving a CAS a waste of time?

Nick Herbert

On Jun 12, 2013, at 2:03 PM, CHRISTOPHER GERRY wrote:

We are both right: the two terms cancel each other out!  That the
whole expectation value is zero is actually exactly what's in our
paper's Eq. 9. This happens because the reciprocity relations must
hold. That Kalamidas thought (or maybe even still thinks) his
calculation is correct, is at the heart of the matter, that is, that
he is either unable to do the calculations or that he can do them but
chooses not too because they don't get him where he wants to go.

The Kalamidas scheme will not work not work on the basis of general
principles as we showed in the first part of our paper (see also
Ghirardi's paper).

And again, the notion that an alleged approximate calculation (I say
"alleged" because as with everything else there are correct and
incorrect approximate calculations) based on a weak signal coherent
state somehow trumps an exact computation valid for any value of the
coherent state parameter, is, well, just insane. If you want to see
where things go wrong just take more terms in the series expansions.
Add up enough terms and, viola, no effect! One can't get much more
specific than that.

Christopher C. Gerry
Professor of Physics
Lehman College
The City University of New York
718-960-8444
christopher.gerry@lehman.cuny.edu


---- Original message ----
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2013 12:28:16 -0700
From: nick herbert <quanta@cruzio.com>
Subject: Re: AW: More on the |0>|0> term
To: Suda Martin
All--

Excuse me for being confused.
Gerry refutes Kalamidas by showing that an omitted term is large.
Suda refutes Kalamidas by showing that the same term is identically
zero.
What am I missing here?

I wish to say that I accept the general proofs. Kalamidas's scheme
will not work as claimed.
That is the bottom line. So if the general proofs say FTL will fail
for full calculation, then it will certainly fail for approximations.

The "weak coherent state" is a common approximation made in quantum
optics. And dozens of experiments have been correctly described using
this approximation. So it should be a simple matter to show if one
uses Kalamidas's approximation, that FTL terms vanish to the
appropriate level of approximation. If this did not happen we would
not be able to trust the results of approximation schemes not
involving FTL claims.

Gerry's criticism is that Kalamidas's scheme is simply WRONG--that he
has thrown away terms DK regards as small.
But in fact they are large. Therefore the scheme is flawed from the
outset.

If Gerry is correct, then it seems appropriate to ask: Is there a
CORRECT WAY of formulating the Kalamidas scheme using the "weak
coherent state" approximation, where it can be explicitly shown that
this correct scheme utterly fails?

It seems to me that there are still some loose ends in this Kalamidas
affair, if not a thorn in the side, at least an unscratched itch.

It seems to me that closure might be obtained. And the Kalamidas
affair properly put to rest if everyone can agree that 1. DK has
improperly treated his approximations; 2. Using the CORRECT
APPROXIMATION SCHEME, the scheme abjectly fails just as the exact
calculation says it must.

Why should it be so difficult to construct a correct description of
the Kalamidas proposal, with CORRECT APPROXIMATIONS, and show that it
fails to work as claimed?

AS seen from the Ghirardi review, there are really not that many
serious FTL proposals in existence. And each one teaches us
something-- mostly about some simple mistakes one should not make when thinking
about quantum systems. Since these proposals are so few, it is really
not a waste of time to consider them in great detail, so we can learn
to avoid the mistakes that sloppy thinking about QM brings about.

When Ghirardi considers the Kalamidas scheme in his review, I would
consider it less than adequate if he did not include the following
information:

1. Kalamidas's scheme is WRONG because he treats approximations
incorrectly.
2. When we treat the approximations correctly, the scheme fails, just
as the general proofs say it must.

Gerry has provided the first part of this information. What is
seriously lacking here is some smart person providing the second
part.

Nick Herbert


On Jun 12, 2013, at 8:50 AM, Suda Martin wrote:

Dear all,

Yes, if one calculates precisely the Kalamidas - expression given in
the attachment of the email of CG one obtains exactly

alpha^{*}(tr^{*}+rt^{*})=0

due to the Stokes-relation of beam splitters. No approximations are
necessary. So, I am astonished about the sloppy calculations of
Demetrios.

Cheers,
Martin

________________________________________
Von: CHRISTOPHER GERRY [CHRISTOPHER.GERRY@lehman.cuny.edu]

Betreff: Re: More on the |0>|0> term

I probably shouldn't jump in on this again, but...

I can assure you that there's no thorn in the side of the quantum
optics community concerning the scheme of Kalamidas. There are only
people doing bad calculations. Despite claims to the contrary, our
paper, as with Ghirardi's, does specifically deal with the Kalamidas
proposal. It is quite clearly the case that EXACT calculations in
the Kalamidas proposal shows that the claimed effect disappears. To
suggest that it's there in the approximate result obtained by series
expansion, and therefore must be a real effect, is simply
preposterous. All it means is that the approximation is wrong; in
this case being due to the dropping important terms.

The whole business about the |00> and whatever (the beam splitter
transformations and all that) is not the issue. I'm astonished at
how the debate on this continues. The real problem, and I cannot
emphasize it enough, is this: Kalamidas cannot do quantum optical
calculations, even simple ones and therefore nothing he does should
be taken seriously. As I've said before, his calculation of our Eq.
(9), which I have attached here, is embarrassingly wrong. It's
obvious from the expression of the expectation value in the upper
left that there has to be two terms in the result both containing
the product of r and t. But Kalamidas throws away one of the terms
which is of the same order of magnitude as the one he retains. Or
maybe he thinks that term is zero via the quantum mechanical
calculation of its expectation value, which it most certainly is
not.  His limits have been taken inconsistently.  So, he not only
does not know how to do the quantum mechanical calculations, he
doesn't even know how or when the limits should be taken. There's
absolutely no point in debating the meaning of the results incorrect
calculations. Of course, by incorrectly doing these things he gets
the result he wants, and then thinks it's the duty of those of us
who can do these calculations to spend time showing him why his
calculations are wrong, which he then dismisses anyway.
My point in again bringing this specific calculation of his is not
to say anything about his proposal per se, but to demonstrate the
abject incompetence of Kalamidas in trying to do even the most
elementary calculations.  And if anyone still wonders why I'm angry
about the whole affair, well, what should I feel if some guy unable
to do simple calculations tries to tell established quantum optics
researchers, like me and Mark Hillery, that our paper showing where
he's wrong dismisses ours as being "irrelevant?" He doesn't even
seem to know that what he said was an insult.

And finally, the continued claim that the specific proposal of
Kalamidas has not been addressed must simply stop. It has been
repeatedly. I suspect this claim is being made because people don't
like the results of the correct calculations. That's not the problem
of those of us can carry through quantum optical calculations.

CG


Christopher C. Gerry
Professor of Physics
Lehman College
The City University of New York
718-960-8444
christopher.gerry@lehman.cuny.edu


---- Original message ----
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2013 14:12:19 -0700
From: nick herbert <quanta@cruzio.com>
Subject: Re: More on the |0>|0> term
To: "Demetrios Kalamidas" <dakalamidas@sci.ccny.cuny.edu>


yer right, demetrios--
the |00> term on the right is always accompanied in Suda's
calculation by a real photon on the left.

But this is entirely non-physical.
No real or virtual quantum event corresponds to this term.

Especially with the high amplitude required for
Suda-interference-destruction.

So your specific approximate FTL scheme despite many general
refutations still remains a puzzlement.

A thorn in the side
of the quantum optics community.

if any think otherwise
let them put on the table
one unambiguous refutation
OF YOUR SPECIFIC PROPOSAL--
not of their own
nor of somebody else's
totally different FTL signaling scheme,

Nick


On Jun 11, 2013, at 1:27 PM, Demetrios Kalamidas wrote:


Nick,

 The EP and CSs do derive from the same laser pulse: part of the
pulse pumps the nonlinear crystal and the other part is split off
accordingly to create the CSs.
 However, you are still misssing the point: If no EP pair is
created, then you will certainly get '00' on the right
sometimes.... BUT there will be no left photon in existence. The
problem with the Suda term is that when it appears, it appears
only accompanied by a left photon in a superposition state: ie it
always appears as (10+e01)(00+11).
 Think of it this way: Suppose you just have an EP source that
creates pairs, with one photon going left and the other right.
Imagine that on the right there is a highly trasnparent BS with
say
|r|^2=0.001. That means that only one out of every thousand right
photons from the EP are reflected, and 999 are transmitted. So,
this means that for every 1000 counts ON THE LEFT, there will be
999 counts tranmitted on the right. Now introduce, at the other
input of that same BS, a CS so that it has a tiny reflected
portion of amplitude |ralpha>. Allegedly then, there will arise
cases where no photon is found in the transmitted channel with
probability equal to |ralpha|^2. Since alpha is arbitrary, we can
choose |
ralpha|=0.1. This means that the probabilty of getting no
photon in
the transmitted channel will be |ralpha|^2=0.01.....Which now
means that, for every 1000 EP pairs created, we will get 1000
counts on the left, but only 900 counts in the transmitted channel
on the right! Whereas, without the CS in the other channel, there
would be
999 counts on the right for that same 1000 counts on the left.
Demetrios


On Tue, 11 Jun 2013 09:44:42 -0700
nick herbert <quanta@cruzio.com> wrote:
Demetrios--
I don't know how the entangled pair (EP) and CSs are generated.
I supposed all three are created with a single PULSE in a non-
linear  crystal.
Now one can imagine that this pulse fails to create an EP but
does  create a CS
Then some of Bob's detectors will fire but no ES is formed.
So this kind of process could lead to lots of |0>|0> terms.
However what we need are not "lots of |0>|0> terms" but a precise
amplitude (rA) of |0>|0> term.
Given our freedom (in the thought experiment world) to
arbitrarily  select
the efficiency of the non-linear crystal, it is hard to see why
the  elusive |0>|0>
term would have exactly the right magnitude and phase to cancel
out  the interference.
Your original FTL scheme still continues to puzzle me.
Nick
On Jun 11, 2013, at 6:54 AM, Demetrios Kalamidas wrote:
Nick,

 The 'entire experimental arrangement' is indeed where the
problem  (mystery) arises:
 When both CSs are generated it is easy to understand that '00'
will arise, simply because each CS has a non-zero vacuum term.
 However, the entire arrangement means inclusion of the
entangled  photon pair:
 Any time that pair is generated, you are guaranteed to get a
photon on the right, regardless of whether the CSs are there.
 So, when entangled pair and CSs are present, there must be at
least one photon at the right. In fact, when only one photon
emerges at the right WE KNOW both CSs were empty.

On Mon, 10 Jun 2013 10:34:30 -0700
nick herbert <quanta@cruzio.com> wrote:
Demetrios--
Sarfatti sent around a nice review of quantum optics
by Ulf Leonhardt that discusses the structure of path-uncertain
photons.
Here is an excerpt:
The interference experiments with single photons mentioned in
Sec.  4.3 have been
performed with photon pairs generated in spontaneous
parametric   downconversion
[127]. Here the quantum state (6.28) of light is essentially
|01> |02> + ζ |11>|12 >. (6.29)
In such experiments only those experimental runs count where
photons  are counted,
the time when the detectors are not firing is ignored, which
reduces  the quantum
state to the photon pair
|11> |12> .
Postselection disentangles the two-mode squeezed
vacuum.
We argued in Sec. 4.3 that the interference of the photon pair
|11> |12> at a 50:50 beam splitter generates the entangled
state   (4.24). Without postselection,
however, this state is the disentangled product of two single-
mode  squeezed vacua,
as we see from the factorization (6.6) of the S matrix. The
notion  of  entanglement
is to some extent relative.
this excerpt suggests a possible origin for Suda's |0>|0> term.
In  the above process, it's just
the inefficiency of the down converter that generates a |0>|0>
term.  That won't do the trick.
But in your more complicated situation--containing two properly
timed  coherent states--
when Bohr's "entire experimental arrangement" is considered,
the
| 0>| 0> term may
arise naturally with the proper amplitude and phase. It would
correspond to events when
the coherent states were successfully generated but there were
no   events in either upper or lower path.
If this conjecture can be shown to hold true, then the
original   Kalamidas proposal would
be refuted by Suda's calculation.
The trick would be to examine--in a thought experiment way--
exactly  how those two |A> beams
are created--looking for entanglement  with |0>|0> states in
the  part  of the experiment considered in your proposal.
Nick
ref: Ulf Leonhardt's wonderful review of quantum optics,
starting   with reflections from a window pane and concluding
with
Hawking radiation.

• 

  Steve Schultz Well, that's no fun. Guess that means I won't be need to register the radio station letters KFTL...

  4 hours ago · "}">Like · 1
• 

  Jack Sarfatti On Jun 12, 2013, at 8:50 AM, Suda Martin wrote:
  
  Dear all,
  
  Yes, if one calculates precisely the Kalamidas - expression given in the attachment of the email of CG one obtains exactly...See More

  3 hours ago · "}">Like
• 

  Jack Sarfatti Von: CHRISTOPHER GERRY
  Gesendet: Mittwoch, 12. Juni 2013 16:18
  An: nick herbert; Demetrios Kalamidas
  Cc: John Howell; Suda Martin; ghirardi Giancarlo; Ruth Elinor Kastner; JACK SARFATTI
  Betreff: Re: More on the |0>|0> term
  
  I probably shouldn't jump in on this again, but...
  
  I can assure you that there's no thorn in the side of the quantum optics community concerning the scheme of Kalamidas. There are only people doing bad calculations. Despite claims to the contrary, our paper, as with Ghirardi's, does specifically deal with the Kalamidas proposal. It is quite clearly the case that EXACT calculations in the Kalamidas proposal shows that the claimed effect disappears. To suggest that it's there in the approximate result obtained by series expansion, and therefore must be a real effect, is simply preposterous. All it means is that the approximation is wrong; in this case being due to the dropping important terms.
  
  The whole business about the |00> and whatever (the beam splitter transformations and all that) is not the issue. I'm astonished at how the debate on this continues. The real problem, and I cannot emphasize it enough, is this: Kalamidas cannot do quantum optical calculations, even simple ones and therefore nothing he does should be taken seriously. As I've said before, his calculation of our Eq. (9), which I have attached here, is embarrassingly wrong. It's obvious from the expression of the expectation value in the upper left that there has to be two terms in the result both containing the product of r and t. But Kalamidas throws away one of the terms which is of the same order of magnitude as the one he retains. Or maybe he thinks that term is zero via the quantum mechanical calculation of its expectation value, which it most certainly is not. His limits have been taken inconsistently. So, he not only does not know how to do the quantum mechanical calculations, he doesn't even know how or when the limits should be taken. There's absolutely no point in debating the meaning of the results incorrect calculations. Of course, by incorrectly doing these things he gets the result he wants, and then thinks it's the duty of those of us who can do these calculations to spend time showing him why his calculations are wrong, which he then dismisses anyway. My point in again bringing this specific calculation of his is not to say anything about his proposal per se, but to demonstrate the abject incompetence of Kalamidas in trying to do even the most elementary calculations. And if anyone still wonders why I'm angry about the whole affair, well, what should I feel if some guy unable to do simple calculations tries to tell established quantum optics researchers, like me and Mark Hillery, that our paper showing where he's wrong dismisses ours as being "irrelevant?" He doesn't even seem to know that what he said was an insult.
  
  And finally, the continued claim that the specific proposal of Kalamidas has not been addressed must simply stop. It has been repeatedly. I suspect this claim is being made because people don't like the results of the correct calculations. That's not the problem of those of us can carry through quantum optical calculations.
  
  CG

  3 hours ago · "}">Like
• 

  Keith Kenemer disappointing, but not unexpected...

  about an hour ago · "}">Like
• 

  Jack Sarfatti Yes, but here is latest from Nick Herbert - Custer's Last Stand
  On Jun 12, 2013, at 12:28 PM, nick herbert <quanta@cruzio.com> wrote:
  
  All--
  
  Excuse me for being confused.
  Gerry refutes Kalamidas by showing that an omitted term is large.
  Suda refutes Kalamidas by showing that the same term is identically zero.
  What am I missing here?
  
  I wish to say that I accept the general proofs. Kalamidas's scheme will not work as claimed.
  That is the bottom line. So if the general proofs say FTL will fail for full calculation, then it will certainly fail for approximations.
  
  The "weak coherent state" is a common approximation made in quantum optics. And dozens of experiments have been correctly described using this approximation. So it should be a simple matter to show if one uses
  Kalamidas's approximation, that FTL terms vanish to the appropriate level of approximation. If this did not happen we would not be able to trust the results of approximation schemes not involving FTL claims.
  
  Gerry's criticism is that Kalamidas's scheme is simply WRONG--that he has thrown away terms DK regards as small. But in fact they are large. Therefore the scheme is flawed from the outset.
  
  If Gerry is correct, then it seems appropriate to ask: Is there a CORRECT WAY of formulating the Kalamidas scheme using the "weak coherent state" approximation, where it can be explicitly shown that this correct scheme utterly fails?
  
  It seems to me that there are still some loose ends in this Kalamidas affair, if not a thorn in the side, at least an unscratched itch.
  
  It seems to me that closure might be obtained. And the Kalamidas affair properly put to rest if everyone can agree that
  1. DK has improperly treated his approximations; 2. Using the CORRECT APPROXIMATION SCHEME, the scheme abjectly fails just as the exact calculation says it must.
  
  Why should it be so difficult to construct a correct description of the Kalamidas proposal, with CORRECT APPROXIMATIONS, and show that it fails to work as claimed?
  
  AS seen from the Ghirardi review, there are really not that many serious FTL proposals in existence. And each one teaches us something-- mostly about some simple mistakes one should not make when thinking about quantum systems. Since these proposals are so few, it is really not a waste of time to consider them in great detail, so we can learn to avoid the mistakes that sloppy thinking about QM brings about.
  
  When Ghirardi considers the Kalamidas scheme in his review, I would consider it less than adequate if he did not include the following information:
  
  1. Kalamidas's scheme is WRONG because he treats approximations incorrectly.
  2. When we treat the approximations correctly, the scheme fails, just as the general proofs say it must.
  
  Gerry has provided the first part of this information. What is seriously lacking here is some smart person providing the second part.
  
  Nick Herbert

  22 minutes ago · "}">Like
• 

  Jack Sarfatti On Jun 12, 2013, at 2:07 PM, JACK SARFATTI <adastra1@me.com> wrote:
  
  Lest anyone be confused. I am not defending Kalamidas's gedankenexperiment. Neither is Nick Herbert.
  I agree, that in contrast to Antony Valentini's strategy, any proposal for stand-alone entanglement signaling that does not violate an axiom of orthodox quantum theory will fail. Furthermore, one must show why such a violation is found in Nature. It's not clear whether John Cramer's experiment is supposed to violate quantum theory or not?
  Going for a blast into the real past - seattlepi.com
  
  www.seattlepi.com/.../Going-for-a-blast-into-the-real-past-1219...
  by Tom Paulson - in 171 Google+ circles
  Nov 14, 2006 – Going for a blast into the real past ... The reflection of UW physicist John Cramer can be seen as he prepares an experiment with lasers. Cramer ...
  Going for a blast into the real past - Worldnews.com
  article.wn.com/view/2013/05/20/Going_for_a_blast_into_the_real_past/
  May 20, 2013 – ... splitting photons actually works, says University of Washington physicist John Cramer, the next step will ... >Going for a blast into the real past ...
  Going for a blast into the real past (quantum retrocausality ...
  www.democraticunderground.com › Discuss
  Nov 15, 2006 - 11 posts - 10 authors
  Going for a blast into the real past. If his experiment with splitting photons actually works, says University of Washington physicist John Cramer, ...
  An Experimental Test of Signaling using Quantum Nonlocality
  faculty.washington.edu/jcramer/NLS/NL_signal.htm
  John G. Cramer. Reports: UW CENPA ... "Going for a blast into the real past", Tom Paulson, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, November 15, 2006 · "Science hopes to ...
  John Cramer's Retrocausality Experiment
  sci.physics.narkive.com › sci physics
  Nov 17, 2006 – "Going for a blast into the real past. If the experiment works, ...University of Washington physicist John Cramer, the next step will be to test for ...
  Retrocausality - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrocausality
  Furthermore, the ability to affect the past suggests that causes could be negated by their own ... The Wheeler–Feynman absorber theory, proposed by John Archibald Wheeler and .... "Going for a blast in the real past". ... "Five Decades of Physics" http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~lisa/CramerSympo
  Begin forwarded message:
  
  From: ghirardi
  Date: June 12, 2013 1:33:38 PM PDT
  To: CHRISTOPHER GERRY
  
  To reinforce the appropriate remarks by Christopher, I want to stress that suggesting that my, as well as Gerry's contributions do not deal with Kalamidas' proposal is an unacceptable position to take. Both of us have PROVED that precisely Kalamidas' proposal does not work and is affected by basic errors that either derive from a mistaken use of general quantum rules or from resorting to unjustified and wrong approximations. That's the story.
  
  GianCarlo Ghirardi
  
  P.S. I believe that the debate which is going on, if it becomes known to a larger community of physicists, is seriously damaging the investigations on foundational issues since it puts into clear evidence that part of the people involved is not even capable of using correctly the basic principles of quantum mechanics.
  
  GianCarlo Ghirardi
  Emeritus
  University of Trieste
  Italy

  4 minutes ago · "}">Like
• 

  Jack Sarfatti For the record I agree with Chris Gerry below: "On Jun 12, 2013, at 2:03 PM, CHRISTOPHER GERRY <christopher.gerry@lehman.cuny.edu> wrote:
  
  We are both right: the two terms cancel each other out! That the whole expectation value is zero is actually exactly what's in our paper's Eq. 9. This happens because the reciprocity relations must hold. That Kalamidas thought (or maybe even still thinks) his calculation is correct, is at the heart of the matter, that is, that he is either unable to do the calculations or that he can do them but chooses not too because they don't get him where he wants to go.
  
  The Kalamidas scheme will not work not work on the basis of general principles as we showed in the first part of our paper (see also Ghirardi's paper).
  
  And again, the notion that an alleged approximate calculation (I say "alleged" because as with everything else there are correct and incorrect approximate calculations) based on a weak signal coherent state somehow trumps an exact computation valid for any value of the coherent state parameter, is, well, just insane. If you want to see where things go wrong just take more terms in the series expansions. Add up enough terms and, viola, no effect! One can't get much more specific than that.
  
  Christopher C. Gerry
  Professor of Physics
  Lehman College
  The City University of New York
  718-960-8444
  christopher.gerry@lehman.cuny.edu"

1.  
2. 

   Jack Sarfatti

   30 minutes ago near San Francisco

   NICK'S REVIEW OF THE KALAMIDAS AFFAIR (JUNE 5, 2013)
   "Recently CCNY physics graduate Demetrios Kalamidas proposed a clever
   faster-than-light signaling scheme [DK1] which survived peer review and
   was recently published in Journal of the Optical Society of America. Kalamidas's FTL scheme has generated much discussion and controversy which I will attempt to summarize in this brief review."

   5Like · · Share

   • Joe Ganser, Keith Kenemer, Uwe Langer and 2 others like this.
   • 

     Jack Sarfatti Nick Herbert continues: "I wish to emphasize that I am not a member of the quantum-optics community nor am I proficient in boson algebra. I am however familiar with devising and refuting FTL communication schemes [1]. I would appreciate comments, corrections and additions to this review.
     Kalamidas's scheme is based on a path-uncertain pair of photons shared by
     Alice and Bob. Whenever Bob's photon path is certain, then so is Alice's, and
     no path interference can occur at Alice's detectors. But if Bob erases which-path information at his detectors, so the argument goes, Alice's which-path information is also (instantly!) erased and interference ensues at Alice's detectors.
     By turning his quantum eraser on and off, Bob can send an FTL signal
     to Alice in the form of patterns of interference or no-interference.
     The beauty of Kalamidas's scheme resides in his original method of which-path
     erasure. When Bob's path info is certain, one path contain a single photon
     and the other path is empty, symbolized by |10> or |01>."

     25 minutes ago · Like
   • 

     Jack Sarfatti "Kalamidas proposes to erase which-path info by mixing into each path a kind of light whose photon number is uncertain. The source of this number-uncertain light is a coherent state |A> which is mixed with Bob's photons via a weakly reflecting beam splitter ( r --> 0) where A is adjusted so that a "weak
     coherent state" |rA> = |0> + rA |1> blends with whatever is in Bob's path. [2] This scheme leads to 5 possible outputs |01>, |01>, |11>, |02> and |20>. For four of these outputs, the path Bob's photon took is not erased, but whenever Bob's counters read |11>, which path the photon took is uncertain and erasure ensues. Using this scheme, Kalamidas can demonstrate apparent FTL signaling from Bob to Alice."

     19 minutes ago · Edited · Like
   • 

     Jack Sarfatti "Once I heard of this scheme, I publicized it on my blog [NH1] and hastened to refute it. I was able to invent a simpler path-erasure scheme using "Gray light" |U> instead of a coherent state (where |U> = x|0> + y|1>) which was easy to refute[NH2]. But I could not refute Kalamidas's original scheme.
     Instead of refuting DK's scheme, I actually enhanced it by showing that if he
     strengthened his "weak coherent state" by expanding it to higher powers of
     (rA), the intensity of his FTL signal would actually increase [NH3]. At about
     this same time I wrote the theme song for an opera celebrating DK's quixotic
     quest [NH4] and issued a second blog post [NH5] publicly challenging the
     physics community to refute DK's audacious scheme. The first physicist to take up the challenge was John Howell at the University of Rochester who produced a general refutation of FTL schemes using photon- mixing of the Kalamidas type [JH1]. John's proof used Displaced Fock States (DFS) as Bob's counter outputs and suggested moreover that Kalamidas had erred by using Photon-added Coherent States (PACS) instead of DFS.
     "Everyone knows" that DFS are the correct output states for this kind of experiment, Howell insisted. This has been shown both theoretically and by experiment, for instance here [L&B] and here [W/MS/al]. Kalamidas could not see where his derivation was flawed, but it was clear that his states were of the PACS type. So if DFS was correct, he was prepared to reluctantly admit defeat. However Martin Suda from Austrian Institute of Technology came to the rescue with a simple proof, that at this particular stage of the beam-splitter algebra, both PACS and DFS were correct states [MS1], an astonishing result I call "the Martin Suda Paradox".

     14 minutes ago · Edited · Like
   • 

     Jack Sarfatti Nick continued: "Coincidently, GianCarlo Ghirardi had just published a review of past FTL signaling schemes [GCG1] and was drawn into the debate. Together with Raffaele Romano, Ghirardi produced a general refutation [G&R] based on "unitary operations." If the operations that Kalamidas performed on his photons were all unitary, then G & R showed that no FTL signaling would ensue.
     Then one of Kalamidas's former teachers and author of several lucid texts on
     quantum-optics, Christopher Gerry, composed a general refutation [CG/etal]
     based on PACS, the same states Kalamidas had used in his scheme. John
     Howell, at about the same time, published a slightly different refutation [JH2]
     also based on PACS.

     8 minutes ago · Like
   • 

     Jack Sarfatti "One might imagine that, confronted with so many general refutations from all sides, that Kalamidas would cave in and admit defeat. But a funny thing happened on the way to the refutation.
     Despite all the general proofs that his scheme was impossible, no one had
     been able to find a mistake in Kalamidas's math nor his physics. It was true
     that his scheme involved an APPROXIMATION but approximations are used
     all the time in physics. DK's "weak coherent state", for instance, is a veritable
     workhorse of quantum optics, is quite well-understood and appears in numerous experiments where it causes no paradoxical behavior. Kalamidas could cite considerable precedent for using this approximation. One of the reviewers quite rightly pointed out that if the general proofs (which contain no approximations) said that DK's FTL scheme could not work, then that certainly spelled doom for all approximate schemes such as the one DK was proposing. To which DK boldly replied: since you are so certain--because of your general proofs--that I am wrong, then it should be "easy pickins" for you to discover my mistake. But no one has yet met this Kalamidas challenge."

     4 minutes ago · Edited · Like
   • 

     Jack Sarfatti "There are two issues here 1. the PACS vs DFS issue and 2. the EXACT vs
     APPROXIMATION issue.
     General refutations using both the PACS and DFS formulations have been
     derived but the PACS APPROXIMATION scheme has not been refuted. It
     remains a mystery why this refutation has not occurred.
     To top things off, Martin Suda formulated a Kalamidas-like scheme using
     DFS APPROXIMATION instead of PACS [MS2]. Suda's new scheme, even
     though approximate, was easily refuted--all the FTL signaling terms obligingly
     summed to zero. However, Martin's nice refutation was spoiled by the
     presence of an ugly non-physical |00> term which no one could justify or
     explain.
     What is the meaning of this impasse? Why can't Kalamidas's simple approximation be refuted when the unapproximated schemes are easily destroyed.
     Martin faintly suspects it has to do with the way the vacuum states |0> are
     treated in approximation schemes. I've always been confused whenever vacuum
     states appear in calculations mixed with "real states". Maybe Kalamidas's
     stubbornly unrefuted FTL scheme (which is certainly wrong, make no
     mistake) has something new and subtle to teach us about boson algebra."
     Nick Herbert (quanta@cruzio.com) June 5, 2013

     about a minute ago · Like
   • 

     Jack Sarfatti REFERENCES
     [1] Nick Herbert "Faster Than Light: Superluminal Loopholes in
     Physics" NAL (1989)<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/
     0452263174?ie=UTF8&tag=nikkherbert-20>
     - 4 -
     [2] A coherent state is conventionally written |alpha>, where "alpha"
     is a complex number. For typographical convenience, I write a
     coherent state as |A> where A is understood to be the upper-case
     Greek "alpha".
     [DK1] Demetrios Kalamidas "A Proposal for a Feasible Quantum-
     Optical Experiment to Test the Validity of the No-signaling
     Theorem" <http://lanl.arxiv.org/abs/1110.4629>--Kalamidas's
     original proposal in the physics arXiv.
     [NH1] Nick Herbert "The Kalamida Experiment (blog)" <http:/
     /quantumtantra.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-kalamidasexperiment.
     html>--Publicizing (#1) DK's FTL communication
     scheme; Confirmation of APPROX DK FTL Scheme
     [NH2] Nick Herbert "The Kalamidas Experiment (pdf)" <http:/
     /quantumtantra.com/KalamidasFINAL.pdf>--Refutation of FULL
     Gray-light version of DK FTL Scheme. (In these references "FULL"
     means NO APPROXIMATIONS)
     [NH3] Nick Herbert "Maximizing the Kalamidas Effect (pdf)" <http:/
     /quantumtantra.com/Kalamidas1.pdf>--Expanding & Confirming
     DK APPROX FTL Scheme to higher powers of rA.
     [NH4] Nick Herbert "Demetrios! The Opera (blog)" <http:/
     /quantumtantra.blogspot.com/2013/02/demetrios-opera.html>--
     Demetrios! The Opera.
     [NH5] Nick Herbert (blog) "FTL Signaling Made Easy" <http:/
     /quantumtantra.blogspot.com/2013/05/ftl-signaling-madeeasy.
     html>--Publicizing (#2) APPROX DK FTL Signaling Scheme.
     [JH1] John Howell "Refutation of the Kalamidas's Signaling" (private
     communication) //Refutation of FULL DFS version of DK FTL Scheme
     - 5 -
     [W/MS/al] A. Windhager, Martin Suda et al "Quantum Interference
     between a Single-photon Fock State and a Coherent State" <http:/
     /arxiv.org/pdf/1009.1844.pdf> -- derivation of DFS output of a
     beamsplitter with input |A, 1>
     [L&B] AI Lvovski & SA Babichev "Synthesis and Tomographic
     Characterization of the Displaced Fock State" <http://lanl.arxiv.org/
     abs/quant-ph/0202163>--production and measurement of DFS at
     beam splitter output.
     [GCG1] GianCarlo Ghirardi "Entanglement, Non-locality,
     Superluminal Signaling and Cloning" <http://lanl.arxiv.org/pdf/
     1305.2305v1.pdf>--Refutation of several historical FTL signaling
     schemes
     [G&R] GianCarlo Ghirardi & Raffaelle Romano "On a quite recent
     proposal of faster than light communication" (private
     communication)--General Refutation of all Full Unitary Systems.
     [CGetal] Christopher Gerry, VV, Ugur Güney & Mark Hillery
     "Comment on a superluminal signaling scheme" (private
     communication)--Refutation of FULL PACS version of DK FTL
     Scheme
     [MS1] "MARTIN SUDA PARADOX" (private communication)--"Martin
     Suda Paradox": Symmetry of PACS and DFS at BS output.
     [MS2] Martin Suda "Interferometry at the 50/50 BS" (private
     communication)--refutation of APPROX DFS version of DK FTL
     Scheme
     [JH2} John Howell "Full Calculation No Approximation" (private
     communication)//refutation of FULL PACS version of DK FTL
     Scheme.

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   Jack Sarfatti

   about an hour ago near San Francisco

   Kalamidas Affair

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   • 

     Jack Sarfatti On Jun 2, 2013, at 7:22 AM, JACK SARFATTI <adastra1@me.com> wrote:
     
     Yes it's always the case that if the time evolution is unitary signal interference terms cancel out. That is essence of the no-signal argument.
     
     It's what defeated my 1978 attempt using two interferometers on each end of the pair source that David Kaiser describes in How the Hippies Saved Physics that was in first edition of Gary Zukav's Dancing Wu Li Masters. Stapp gave one of the first no-signal proofs in response to my attempt.
     
     I. However, one of the tacit assumptions is that all observables must be Hermitian operators with real eigenvalues and a complete orthogonal basis.
     
     II. Another assumption is that the normalization once chosen should not depend on the free will of the experimenter.
     
     Both & II are violated by Glauber states. The linear unitary dynamics is also violated when the coherent state is Higgs-Goldstone vacuum/groundstate expectation value order parameter of a non-Hermitian boson second quantized field operator where the c number local nonlinear nonunitary Landau-Ginzburg equation in ordinary space replaces the linear unitary Schrodinger equation in configuration (or Wigner phase space more generally) as the dominant dynamic. P. W. Anderson called this "More is different."
     
     For example in my toy model NORMALIZED so as to rid us of that damn spooky telepathic psychokinetic voodoo magick without magic
     
     |A,B> = [2(1 + |<w|z>|^2)]^-1/2[|0>|z> + |1>|w>]
     
     <0|1> = 0 for Alice A
     
     <w|z> =/= 0 for Bob B
     
     Take
     
     Trace over B {|0><0| |A,B><A,B|} = 1/2 etc.
     
     probability is conserved and Alice receives no signal from Bob in accord with Abner Shimony's "passion at a distance".
     
     However, probability is not conserved on Bob's side!
     
     Do the calculation if you don't believe me.
     
     Two more options
     
     i. use 1/2^1/2 normalization, then we get an entanglement signal for Alice with violation of probability conservation for Alice, though not for Bob
     
     ii Final Rube Goldberg option (suspect)
     
     use different normalizations depending on who does the strong von Neumann measurement Alice or Bob.
     
     Now this is a violation of orthodox quantum theory ladies and gentlemen.
     
     Sent from my iPhone in San Francisco, Russian Hill
     
     ====================================================================

     about an hour ago · Edited · Like · 1
   • 

     Jack Sarfatti On Jun 2, 2013, at 12:56 AM, nick herbert <quanta@cruzio.com> wrote:
     
     Kalamidas Fans--
     
     I have looked over Martin Suda's two papers entitled 1. Taylor expansion of Output States and 2. Interferometry at the 50/50 BS.
     
     My conclusion is that Martin is within one millimeter of a solid refutation of the kalamidas scheme. Congratulations, Martin, on
     achieving this result and on paying so much close attention to kalamidas's arguments.
     
     The result, as expected, comes from a very strange direction. In particular, the approximation does not enter into Suda's refutation.
     Martin accepts all of kalamidas's approximations and refutes him anyway.
     
     I have not followed the math in detail but I have been able to comprehend the essential points.
     
     First, on account of the Martin Suda paradox, either PACS or DFS can be correctly used at this stage of the argument. So martin
     derives the kalamidas result both ways using PACS (Kalamidas's Way) and then DFS (Howell's Way). Both results are the same.
     
     Then Martin calculates the signal at the 50/50 beam splitter (Alice's receiver) due to Bob's decision to mix his photon with a coherent state |A>.
     Not surprisingly Martin discovers lots of interference terms.
     
     So Kalamidas is right.
     
     However all of these interference terms just happen to cancel out.
     
     So Kalamidas is wrong.
     
     Refutation Complete. Martin Suda Wins.
     
     This is a very elegant refutation and if it can be sustained, then Kalamidas's Scheme has definitively
     entered the Dustbin of History. And GianCarlo can add it to his upcoming review of refuted FTL schemes.
     
     But before we pass out the medals, there is one feature of the Suda Refutation that needs a bit of justification.
     Suda's formulation of the Kalamidas Scheme differs in one essential way from Demetrios's original presentation.
     And it is this difference between the two presentations that spells DOOM FOR DEMETRIOS.
     
     Kalamidas has ONE TERM |1,1> that erases which-way information and Suda has two. Suda's EXTRA TERM is |0,0>
     and represents the situation where neither of Bob's primary counters fires.
     
     Having another term that erases which-way information would seem to be good, in that the Suda term might be expected to increase
     the strength of the interference term.
     
     However--and this is the gist of the Suda refutation--the additional Suda term |0.0> has precisely the right amplitude
     to EXACTLY CANCEL the effect of the Kalamidas |1,1> term. Using A (Greek upper-case alpha) to represent "alpha",
     Martin calculates that the amplitude of the Kalamidas |1,1> term is A. And that the amplitude of the Suda |0,0> term is -A*.
     
     And if these amplitudes are correct, the total interference at Alice's detectors completely disappears.
     
     Congratulations, Martin. I hope I have represented your argument correctly.
     
     The only task remaining is to justify the presence (and the amplitude) of the Suda term. Is it really physically reasonable,
     given the physics of the situation, that so many |0,0> events can be expected to occur in the real world?
     
     I leave that subtle question for the experts to decide.
     
     Wonderful work, Martin.
     
     Nick Herbert
     
     ====================================================================

OK, here is a simple case - not same as Kalamidas mind you - that seems to be outside the rules of orthodox quantum theory.

Alice the receiver has an ordinary orthodox quantum bit with base states |0> & |1> for a given orientation of her apparatus which never changes in the experiment. Bob the sender has two distinguishable non-orthogonal Glauber coherent eigenstates |z> and |w> of the non-Hermitian observable boson destruction operator a, where z and w are complex numbers. Right at this point we have violated one of the axioms of orthodox quantum theory in a factual way since Glauber states are facts.

Suppose we have the entangled state

|A,B> = (1/2)^1/2[|0>|z> + |1>|w>]

then using the orthodox Born probability rule in density matrix formulation gives

p(0) = p(1) = (1/2)[1 + |<z|w>|^2]

p(0) + p(1) = 1 +  |<z|w>|^2 > 1

the entanglement signal at Alice's receiver is  |<z|w>|^2 violating conservation of Born's rule for probability - because the observable is not hermitian and actually a closer examination shows a non-unitary time evolution. This is a larger theory that reduces to orthodox quantum theory in the appropriate limit.

note



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coherent_states


Now, we can squirm out of this by a-priori ad-hoc forcing of the non-universal normalization

|A,B>' =  [1 +  |<z|w>|^2]^-1/2|A,B>

giving

p'(0) = p'(1) = 1/2 with no signaling Note, that Bob does not need to use that normalization at all because of Alice's <0|1> = 0.

That's why I use "non-universal" above.

However, it's not clear the Nature works this way without more testing.

On Jun 1, 2013, at 1:04 PM, Ghirardi Giancarlo <ghirardi@ictp.it> wrote:


Il giorno 01/giu/2013, alle ore 18:38, JACK SARFATTI <adastra1@me.com> ha scritto:


Ghirardi: I do not agree at all on this. The actual situation is that there has never been a clear cut indication that in Kalamidas serf-up something (probabilities, outcomes or whatever you want) actually changes something at left as a consequence of preparing one or the other state at right, so that it can be used to send faster than light signals. It is his duty and not ours to prove that the effect exist. I believe to have argued against its existence and I have also checked that for the most natural observables at left no difference occurs when you choose one or the other of the two initial states. The game is back to Kalamidas. And, sincerely, I am a little bit disturbed by all this enormous mess and many inadequate and unjustified statements that have been put forward during the debate. I am not keen to follow the matter any more.

On Jun 1, 2013, at 1:54 PM, Suda Martin <Martin.Suda.fl@ait.ac.at> wrote:

Dear all,
thanks to everybody for emails, papers, contributions to discussion and comments. I enjoyed very much the highly interesting dialogues. I can fully agree to the arguments of CG and GG, of course.
Only a comment with respect to the question of the approximation:
As regards the approximation done in the calculation of DK, I would like to point out again - and I sent a pdf called Interf_BS_50_50_Suda.pdf two days ago -  that because of such an approach the normalization of the output wave function behind the 50/50 BS has been changed to (1+2|alpha|^2+|alpha|^4), see Eq.(7), instead of being exactly 1. The probabilities for the potential "interference part" (see Eq.(6)) are (|p_10|^2+|p_01|^2)/4=2|alpha|^2 and the other parts give all together  2(|q_10|^2+|q_01|^2)/4=1+|alpha|^4. One keeps therefore precisely the modified normalization of Eq.(7). One can clearly see that the "interference part" and the other parts are outcomes from an incorrect normalization.
Nice regards,
Martin

Begin forwarded message:

From: CHRISTOPHER GERRY <CHRISTOPHER.GERRY@lehman.cuny.edu>
Subject: Re: The Kalamidas affair
Date: June 1, 2013 9:46:37 AM PDT
To: nick herbert <quanta@cruzio.com>
Cc: Ghirardi Giancarlo <ghirardi@ictp.it>, Demetrios Kalamidas <dakalamidas@sci.ccny.cuny.edu>, John Howell <howell@pas.rochester.edu>, Suda Martin <martin.suda.fl@ait.ac.at>, Ruth Kastner <rekastner@hotmail.com>, JACK SARFATTI <adastra1@me.com>, "Romano rromano@iastate.edu [MATH]" <rromano@iastate.edu>

Nick and everyone,

The specific failings of the Kalamidas proposal have, in fact, been pointed out in the papers you mentioned and elsewhere. I don't understand why anyone continues to say otherwise. To say that they have not been addressed does not make it so, and comes off merely an act of denial. This has been an interesting episode, but I think it's time to stop beating a dead horse. Chris

On Jun 1, 2013, at 9:13 AM, nick herbert <quanta@cruzio.com> wrote:

Kalamidas fans--

NH: I believe that everyone is in agreement that general considerations prove that the Kalamidas proposal must fail.

JS: Yes

In both Ghirardi's and Gerry's papers, they emphasize these general considerations and decline to engage in the specifics of Kalamidas's calculations. Whether one wishes to engage the specifics or not is a matter of taste. But Kalamidas is asking us to engage in specifics. As he puts it: Since you know that I am wrong, it should be "easy pickins" to
point out exactly where I am mistaken.

Gerry comes closest to meeting Kalamidas's challenge to move out of the safety of generalities and deal with specifics.

In the conclusion of Gerry's paper he states "Clearly, if the exact calculation shows no interference, but the approximate calculation does, there is something wrong with the approximate calculation. Looking at Eq 6, one notes that while some terms to order rA have been kept in going from 6a to 6c, the terms labeled "vanishing" in Eq 6b are also of this order and have been discarded. Thus the approximate calculation in {1} is inconsistent and wrong."

Gerry engages in specifics. He is meeting Kalamidas on his own terms. But he neglects to specify exactly which terms of order rA Kalamidas has mistakenly labeled as "vanishing". When Gerry displays these wrongly-neglected terms (perhaps in an informal note), he would have definitively "slain the beast in his own lair" and we can all get on with the non-Kalamidas aspects of our lives.

JS: Agreed, thanks Nick :-)

Nick

PS: There is still the fascinating Martin Suda Paradox which was discovered in the context of the Kalamidas refutation, but that is a separate issue altogether.

JS: What is that Nick? Please give details.

Begin forwarded message:

From: JACK SARFATTI <adastra1@me.com>
Subject: [ExoticPhysics] Fwd: The Kalamidas affair
Date: June 1, 2013 7:45:42 AM PDT
To: Exotic Physics <exoticphysics@mail.softcafe.net>
Reply-To: Jack Sarfatti's Workshop in Advanced Physics <exoticphysics@mail.softcafe.net>

Sent from my iPad


Subject: Re: The Kalamidas affair

yes I agree with this
any attempt at signaling within axioms of orthodox quantum theory will fail e.g. Adrian Kent's papers
however, antony valentini, myself and others (Stapp, Weinberg, Josephson) have all independently proposed several extensions giving a more general non-orthodox post quantum theory containing orthodox quantum theory as a limiting case. In particular, the non-hermitian boson destruction operator is a macroscopic observable with Glauber coherent eigenstates that are non-orthogonal distinguishable violating orthodox quantum theory. Furthermore, they obey a non-unitary dynamics given by the c-number landau-ginzburg equation for spontaneous broken symmetry ground/vacuum state emergent local order parameters. These order parameters entangle with others and also with orthodox qubits, so we have a new larger theory here analogous to general relativity in relation to special relativity.

Furthermore, there is no violation with the group structure of relativity because  intervals are frame invariant and what matters is the interval between actual irreversible detections. What is violated is the retarded casuality axiom appended to relativity that is adhoc like Euclid's fifth axiom. Again the analogy to non-Euclidean geometry is appropriate.

Sent from my iPad

On Jun 1, 2013, at 6:40 AM, CHRISTOPHER GERRY <CHRISTOPHER.GERRY@lehman.cuny.edu> wrote:

Everyone,

I'm in total agreement with Prof. Ghirardi's assessment. The beam splitter transformations are not the essential point here, as even if the are done correctly, the claimed effect goes away. We addressed the beam splitter issue in our comment to demonstrate that sloppy calculations in general are contained in the Kalamidas paper. We then assumed that the one case of his t and r of parameters that would satisfy the reciprocity relations actually held, thus ensuring that his transformations did not violate unitarity (for that one case!) and from there showed via an exact calculation that the effect disappears. As I said, it will disappear even with totally correct, unitary beam splitter transformations, just as stated by Prof. Ghirardi. Chris



Christopher C. Gerry
Professor of Physics
Lehman College
The City University of New York
718-960-8444
christopher.gerry@lehman.cuny.edu


---- Original message ----
Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2013 14:57:07 +0200
From: Ghirardi Giancarlo <ghirardi@ictp.it>  Subject: The Kalamidas affair  To: CHRISTOPHER GERRY <christopher.gerry@lehman.cuny.edu>, Demetrios Kalamidas <dakalamidas@sci.ccny.cuny.edu>, John Howell <howell@pas.rochester.edu>, nick herbert <quanta@cruzio.com>, Suda Martin <martin.suda.fl@ait.ac.at>, Ruth Kastner <rekastner@hotmail.com>, JACK SARFATTI <adastra1@me.com>, "Romano rromano@iastate.edu [MATH]" <rromano@iastate.edu>

Dear all,
  attached herewith you will find a letter (even though it looks like a paper for technical reasons) that I have decided to forward to you to make clear the conceptual status of the situation. I hope of having been clear and I wait for comments.

With my best regards


GianCarlo


________________
remarks.pdf (83k bytes)
________________


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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 <sarfatti@pacbell.net> wrote:

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 <quanta@cruzio.com> wrote:

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 <dakalamidas@sci.ccny.cuny.edu> wrote:

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 <dakalamidas@sci.ccny.cuny.edu> wrote:

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 <quanta@cruzio.com> wrote:
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 <dakalamidas@sci.ccny.cuny.edu> wrote:

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 <sarfatti@pacbell.net> wrote:

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 <quanta@cruzio.com> wrote:

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

• 
  On Feb 3, 2013, at 12:42 PM, JACK SARFATTI <sarfatti@pacbell.net> wrote:
  
  Fred, I think you are making an error here. The vacuum |0> is as good a state as |1> in Fock space for a given mode-radiation oscillator. DK's eq. 1 is a FOUR PHOTON state - two REAL PHOTONS & TWO VIRTUAL PHOTONS
  
  Note also that Glauber coherent states use |0> in an fundamental way.
  
  quantum optics interferometer experiments use the |0> states e.g. papers by Carlton Caves
  
  http://info.phys.unm.edu/~caves/
  
  http://info.phys.unm.edu/~caves/research.html
  
  http://info.phys.unm.edu/~caves/talks/talks.html
  
  
  Search Results
  [PDF] Quantum-limited measurements: One physicist's crooked path from ...
  www.phys.virginia.edu/Announcements/Seminars/.../S1466.pd...
  File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - Quick View
  physicist's crooked path from quantum optics to quantum information. I. Introduction. II. Squeezed states and optical interferometry. III. ... Carlton M. Caves ...
  [PDF] Quantum metrology - University of New Mexico
  info.phys.unm.edu/~caves/talks/qmetrologylectures.pdf
  File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - Quick View
  Carlton M. Caves. Center for Quantum ... Ramsey interferometry, cat states, and spin squeezing. Carlton M. ... Weinstein, and N. Mavalvala, Nature Physics 4, ...
  
  
  
  On Feb 3, 2013, at 12:26 PM, fred alan wolf <fawolf@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
  
      Nick and Demetrios, basic quantum physics tells me that eq. 1 of
  KISS is a 4-photon state. That is my point. Let the Hamiltonian go. Ergo, to
  claim it as 2-photon state cannot be correct. Eq. 1 says something about
  phases as well.  If I write a quantum wave function as a sum over i of
  |ai>|bi>|ci>|di> then there must be 4 objects, not two, regardless of how
  large is i.  Even if |ai> is a sum of possibilities such as (|A1>+|A2>) and
  similarly for the bi, ci and di states, I still can't get this to reduce to
  a sum over two particle states.  Nicht wahr?     So I am confused how you both seem to see this as OK as far as
  quantum physics is concerned.
  
      Jack, do you or do you not see my point?   
  Best Wishes,
  
  Fred Alan Wolf Ph.D.  aka Dr. Quantum ®

   

  Jack Sarfatti Hi all,
  
  I'll quickly respond to Fred's question. The state in eq.1 is perfectly legitimate and has been experimentally realized already.
  In this scheme it is tacitly assumed that the source S is a down-conversion source, since this is by far the main way in which entangled photon pairs are created. These sources need a pump to stimulate the nonlinear medium (i.e. down-conversion crystal).
  Usually about one in every million pump photons are split into an entangled pair, each photon of which comes out at a specific angle and energy. The way to create two photons in modes a1a2 is to have the pump come from the bottom and pass upward; the way to create two photons in modes b1b2 is the BACK-REFLECT the same pump downward through the crystal again.
  So,each run of the experiment is ONE DOUBLE-PASS of the pump through the crystal....most of the times you get nothing and, to very good approximation, the rest of the time you get one pair created (either in a1a2 or b1b2)....Of course there is also the far smaller amplitude of creating two pairs (one in a1a2 and one in b1b2, or two in a1a2, or two in b1b2)....according to the expansion of the Hamiltonian....but these are negligible terms and do not affect the outcomes in all these entanglement experiments.
  Demetrios

  5 minutes ago · "}">Like
• 

  Jack Sarfatti On Feb 3, 2013, at 11:48 AM, JACK SARFATTI <sarfatti@pacbell.net> wrote:
  
  I agree with Nick.
  
  On Feb 3, 2013, at 11:25 AM, nick herbert <quanta@cruzio.com> wrote:
  
  No need for Hamiltonians, Fred.
  The KISS proposal is as simple as LEGOs.
  Every part of it is something
  THAT HAS ALREADY BEEN DEMONSTRATED IN A LAB.
  
  Kalamidas has put these existing Legos together
  in an imaginative way that seems to permit
  superluminal signaling.
  
  But probably does not.
  
  If you, Fred, are waiting for a Hamiltonian formulation
  of this experiment you will be waiting for a long time
  and will have essentially disconnected yourself
  from the KISS adventure.
  
  Nick Herbert
  KISS = Kalamidas's Instant Signaling Scheme
  ---- end of Nick's message above, I wrote:
  OK there are two separate issues here.
  
  Question 1: Fred if DK's wave function
  
  Could be made, then do you agree with DK's logic for the rest of the paper.
  
  I think the above wave function is perfectly legitimate in principle although whether one can make it in the lab is another question.
  
  (1) is perfectly sensible in quantum field theory in Fock space.
  
  There are four radiation oscillators with two real photons and two zero point photons distributed among them. The vacuum states |0> are legitimate states.
  
  Question 2. Accepting (1) is DK's logic etc. correct? I think Nick Herbert is working on that question.
  
  I personally am still thinking about the whole thing looking at Mandel as well and trying to understand the whole thing better.
  
  My previous work on the Glauber state distinguishable non-orthogonality loop hole in the no-signaling belief is generally compatible with the spirit of what DK is proposing. I mean
  
  On Feb 3, 2013, at 9:53 AM, fred alan wolf wrote:
  
  Guys and girls,
  
  I don't believe this will work simply because to my knowledge there is no foundation based on quantum physics which supports this initial supposedly 2-particle quantum wave function. What Hamiltonian does it solve? You can always invent quantum wave functions (which are not connected to reality) but to claim this one (which apparently uses 4 photons not 2) has solved the ftl problem is simply bad physics as I see it. If I am wrong here, will somebody explain how this quantum wave function is a two body quantum wave function? Can you show me the Hamiltonian it is solution for?
  
  Best Wishes,
  
  Fred Alan Wolf Ph.D. aka Dr. Quantum

  a few sec

5. Thanks Nick. What would Santa do without you in his workshop? ;-)
   Looks good. Remember I have been stressing the relevance of Glauber coherent states.
   They are obviously distinguishably non-orthogonal & over-complete.
   
   
   On Feb 2, 2013, at 1:48 PM, nick herbert <quanta@cruzio.com> wrote:
   
   Demetrios--
   
   Congratulations again on your clever FTL-signaling scheme.
   
   I am busy constructing (on my white board) your thought experiment
   using my own notation.
   
   First: I hope you do not mind the acronym I have chosen for this project = KISS
   
   KISS = Kalamidas's Instant Signaling Scheme.
   
   Second: It has become conventional to imagine these signals sent between Alice and Bob.
   So everything on left side should be labeled "A" and on the right side "B".
   
   Since A and B photons are delivered into two (entangled) modes, I have chosen to label these modes U and D (for Up and Down). In this labeling convention the basic entangled state vector |ES> becomes
   
   |ES> = |1>(AU)|0>(AD)|1>(BU) |0>(BD)  + |0>(AU)|1>(AD)|0>(BU)|1>(BD)
   
   or (dropping the subscripts)
   
   |ES> = |1>|0>|1>|0> + |0>|1>|0>|1>
   
   which is essentially your (unnormalized) EQ 1.
   
   Also it is conventional for beam-splitter modes to be labeled 1, 2, 3, 4
   where 1 and 2 are inputs and 3 and 4 are outputs.
   
   So for my thought experiment I will label the 4 modes of Bob's two beam splitters U and D
   as |U1>, |U2>, |U3>, |U4> and |D1>, |D2>, |D3> and |D4> with a similar convention for the 50/50 beamsplitter encountered by Alice's photons.
   
   I like your clever use of coherent states to muddle the which-way question. But instead of inputting coherent states at  Bob's beamsplitters U and D, I will be inputting the coherent XYZ states |BU> and |BD>
   
   where |BU> = x|0> + y|1> + z|2>
   
   and |BD> has a similar definition.
   
   These are truncated coherent states sufficient to produce the ambiguities you claim will lead to coincidence-less, Bob-controllable interference in Alice's 50/50 beamsplitter and are easier to calculate than the infinite sums of real coherent states.
   
   Thanks for the opportunity to return to the algebra of few photons on an asymmetric beam splitter. And for the chance to reformulate your clever KISS experiment in terms that make sense to me.
   
   I am always looking for (high quality) work to do.
   
   And your KISS proposal is both of high quality and within my modest abilities for calculating quantum outcomes.
   
   warm regards
   Nick Herbert
   http://quantumtantra.blogspot.com
   

    

   If this paper proves correct in the lab, it vindicates my struggle since 1960 or so that MIT Physics Professor David Kaiser has recorded for history in his book "How the Hippies Saved Physics." This will be a science-technology revolution worth billions if not trillions of dollars for visionary venture capitalists.
   "Proposal for a feasible quantum-optical experiment to test the validity of the no-signaling theorem
   Demetrios A. Kalamidas
   4 Raith USA, 2805 Veterans Memorial Hwy, Ronkonkoma, New York 11779, USA (dakalamidas@sci.ccny.cuny.edu)
   Received November 29, 2012; accepted January 17, 2013;
   posted January 24, 2013 (Doc. ID 180742)
   Motivated by a proposal from [Phys. Scr. T76, 57 (1998)] for superluminal signaling and inspired by an experiment
   from [Phys. Rev. Lett. 67, 318 (1991)] showing interference effects within multiparticle entanglement without
   coincidence detection, we propose a feasible quantum-optical experiment that purports to manifest the capacity
   for superluminal transfer of information between distant parties." © 2013 Optical Society of America
   OCIS codes: 270.4180, 270.5290, 270.5565, 270.5585.

    

   "Numerous experiments to date, mainly in the quantum-optical domain, seem to strongly support the notion of an inherent nonlocality pertaining to certain multiparticle quantum mechanical processes. However, with apparently equal support, this time from a theoretical perspective, it is held that these nonlocal “influences” cannot be exploited to produce superluminal transfer of information between distant parties. The theoretical objection to superluminal communication, via quantum mechanical multiparticle entanglement, is essentially encapsulated by the “no-signaling theorem” [1]. So, it is within this context that we present a scheme whose mathematical description leads to a result that directly contradicts the no-signaling theorem and manifests, using only the standard quantum mechanical formalism, the capacity for superluminal transmission of information."