Photon counting for the masses

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Hi Tim, You don't need low temperatures. All the atomic clocks on cell phone towers are using the same process. There it's 'flipping' between two hyperfine states ~ GHz range. But you can use the same technique, with Zeeman splitting, and with a *well controlled* DC magnetic field can follow the resonance down into the kHz region. So one kHz RF 'photon' absorption, then results in the absorption of a ~800nm (~10^14 Hz) optical 'photon'. A gain of 10^11! Alfred Kastler recieved the noble prize for pioneering the technique.

George H.

Transiently, sure.

--

John Larkin                  Highland Technology Inc
www.highlandtechnology.com   jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com   

Precision electronic instrumentation
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators
Custom timing and laser controllers
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links
VME  analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer
Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators

Poor Bob, then you have no way of knowing whether your mom loves you, because it can't even be formulated as a scientific question. ;)

Science is the study of efficient causation by the method of hypothesis and experiment, and a very useful thing it is too. (I've devoted a big chunk of my professional life to it--I'm a fan.)

The foundations of science aren't testable by experiment. Your bald assertion that scientific knowledge is the only real kind is also uncorroborated by scientific evidence--it's a pure statement of faith.

Knowledge of God is knowledge by acquaintance, like your knowledge of your mom, and philosophically the two cases stand or fall together--maybe your mom loves you, and maybe God loves you too, but you'll never find out either one using scientific instruments.

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
845-480-2058

hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net

If he's going diagonally, he has to go faster than the wave, by a factor of the secant of the angle his path makes with the wave's k vector. Otherwise he gets creamed.

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
845-480-2058

hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net

You haven't shown that Le Saga particles exist. Until you do so, this Le Saga notion deserves nothing but the "dogma" label you so casually fling around.

--
People need good lies.  There are too many bad ones.
		-- Bokonon, "Cat's Cradle" by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Irrelevant. You are comparing waves within a medium to a phenomenon that is not even fully a wave phenomenon (don't give me any bullshit about "no photons" unless you back it up).

He most certainly *did* make a theory. He didn't have to "explain" it. That isn't necessarily a part of a theory. He used mathematics to arrive at conclusions that were expressible in physical terms, made predictions based on them, and those predictions were observed to be true. That is exactly what a theory is.

The fact that the theory gave the right answer in many cases was part of the reason it was accepted. That's the basis for accepting a theory - it explains a set of facts well, and it makes predictions that can be tested.

There are no apes. Arrogant folks like you tend to think you're the only ones who understand; but you delude yourself. You would be better served to go back to the books, admit that you don't know what you're talking about, and start over fresh with the attitude that you *don't* know.

Thinking you already know is the single most effective bar to learning. As long as you think scientists are a bunch of sleepy apes, you will never understand science.

Or don't learn. Science is hard. Math is hard. It's much easier to just follow some bullshit notion like Le Saga particles, than to learn this stuff. It's much more fun to dispense with reality and play "make- believe." But when you play make-believe, you have to understand that it's not going to happen in the real world.

The sad thing is that there may indeed be some way around this FTL limit. Einstein's theory was spectacular for its time, but it isn't Holy Writ (much as you keep trying to claim it is). Some day we may find evidence that, under some situations, Relativity breaks down, just as Newton's theories broke down at high speeds and intense energies. There is no shame in that; Einstein's theory has already had a good run, even if it's overthrown today.

But it's not going to be overthrown by bullshit, nor by arrogant amateurs waiting for the apes to awaken.

--
You want to know why I kept getting promoted?  Because my mouth knows more
than my brain.
		-- W.G.

So what's wrong with that? If the domain of God is "spiritual," why should there be any evidence of it in the "real" world? Different domains, different rules.

Well, why should anyone even talk about such things? Nowhere do I find that a belief in God requires me to prove that God exists, or that I somehow must share my experiences of God with others. That many people

*do* feel such a need does not confirm that the need exists.

I believe that, just as the domain of science is the physical world, its ideas are communal, objective, universal. And as religion (or more accurately, *spirituality*) is of the "spiritual" domain, its ideas are personal, private, subjective.

Unlike some, I believe that subjective experiences can be valid, even if no one ever shares the experience. But... there's no way to prove that, because that requires a shared reality, an objective one.

OK, take the topic of love (not sexual love, just human love). It is not demonstrable. It is sheer speculation because it cannot be corroborated by evidence. Yet most of us will admit that it exists.

It is a purely subjective experience that we may try to share, that we may discuss, but that in the long run we simply cannot prove. But it still exists.

By similar reasoning, other subjective experiences can exist that cannot be demonstrated rationally or objectively, but that are nevertheless valid.

Of course, if you don't admit the existence of love, this whole argument falls apart... but then I can't help you.

--
Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
		-- Wernher von Braun

I have no problem with things that have not been, or maybe cannot be explained. I just don't understand their extrapolation into a belief system.

--
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence 
over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."
                                       (Richard Feynman)

It's not exactly absent in some parts of the USA.

--
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence 
over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."
                                       (Richard Feynman)

I'm designing two pumped-fiber laser controllers right now, and I did the timing system and amplitude modulators for NIF, the world's biggest laser; the Pockels cell slabs and tripler crystals are stunningly beautiful. But you can hardly argue that high-power nonlinear effects destroy the basic concept of wave-particle duality.

Given a photon-sensitive detector, it is demonstrable that a beam splitter does not split a photon (or, if you prefer, a wave) into two pieces, each of lower energy. Interferance experiments prove that the splitter does indeed split light, even single quanta, whatever you want to call them. So there.

--

John Larkin                  Highland Technology Inc
www.highlandtechnology.com   jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com   

Precision electronic instrumentation
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators
Custom timing and laser controllers
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links
VME  analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer
Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators

As I said, it's knowledge by acquaintance. God introduces Himself to us--otherwise we'd have little idea of His character except what we can glean from the world around us. Since the world appears capricious rather than orderly, it's easy to go wrong there. That's why Aristotle and all subsequent writers until the 14th Century put the boundary between the changeable and imperfect Earth and the perfect and immutable heavens at the sphere (orbit) of the Moon.

There are lots of other lines of inquiry that lead in the same direction--the origin and amazing uniformity of conscience across civilizations, the experience of the numinous, the first cause, and so on. C. S. Lewis's "Mere Christianity" is an excellent read on those points among many others.

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
845-480-2058

hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net

If you think of the light as a CW wave, and the e-o modulator as, well, an amplitude modulator, then that's exactly what's happening. The width and shape of the gate will determine the spectrum of the modulated light.

If you think of the light as being composed of individual photons, which we are gating through a switch, it's harder to see why the wavelength of any photon is changed by being allowed through the gate. I suppose you could think of a photon as having long tails, and the gate asymmetrically chops off the tails of any photon that's not in the exact center of the time gate, which nudges it one way or the other. Something like that. [1]

Fortunately, there are PhD optical dudes to do the heavy thinking here; all I have to do is make the pulses. Unfortunately, they (I'm talking two different groups here) don't know exactly what waveforms they really want, or what the effects will be, until they try it.

That's the cool thing about circuit design. We get involved in scores of cool things at the tourist/dillitante sort of level, build a board and depart as heroes, and move on. The people we work with often do one thing their entire career.

[1] So the time gate could add or subtract energy from a short light pulse. I wonder if that's observable electrically.

--

John Larkin                  Highland Technology Inc
www.highlandtechnology.com   jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com   

Precision electronic instrumentation
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators
Custom timing and laser controllers
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links
VME  analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer
Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators

I've known people who dismissed caring, altruism, and love as mere evolutionary optimizations, and invariably used that perspective to be selfish jerks. It didn't seem to make them happy.

--

John Larkin                  Highland Technology Inc
www.highlandtechnology.com   jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com   

Precision electronic instrumentation
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators
Custom timing and laser controllers
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links
VME  analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer
Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators

I think that we evolved in a very dangerous world, and fear made us careful and protected us. The world is much less dangerous now, but people are just as afraid. Fear is sort of like allergies: when there are no serious parasite and infectious challenges around, you body amps up its defenses and gets all worked up over pollen and gluten and whatever.

Fear is a great inhibiter of good electronic design, too.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc

jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

Precision electronic instrumentation
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators
Custom laser drivers and controllers
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links
VME thermocouple, LVDT, synchro   acquisition and simulation

Get a silicon photodiode or a PMT and try it.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc

jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

Precision electronic instrumentation
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators
Custom laser drivers and controllers
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links
VME thermocouple, LVDT, synchro   acquisition and simulation

Yup, I've known a few too. If truth is a social construction, then everything comes down to power--is it going to be _your_ construction, or _mine_?

Mechanistic determinism is an entirely inhumane philosophy--it's very fortunate that most mechanists are much better than their principles, though as you say, there are exceptions.

One other major flaw that's been known since Plato is that if thought is merely a succession of states of the brain proceeding purely by physical causation, there's no way for logical causation to influence it, so Einstein's brain and a madman's are equally irrational.

That is, in a purely mechanistic universe, rational thought is impossible--so the mechanistic philosophy cannot be consistently held by anyone.

The mechanists I've talked to all seemed to imagine that there was this chasm at their feet, separating their own minds, which they imagined to be free and rational, from the operation of the remainder of the universe.

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
845-480-2058

hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net

No problem George, I managed to find some LED's in my stash that would avalanche at a reasonable level.

I did this at home base and used my analog 350Mhz scope. I can say that this noise, looks almost organized. It's obvious that hysteresis effects in the pn junction could contribute to possible relaxation oscillation that I can see, via the saw tooth waves however, it's the mysterious randomness or appears to be that, in between this that is alluding me.

During this period or oscillation (saw tooth), there seems to be other pulses being introduced with in the ramp angles/slopes of the saw tooth?

This leads me to believe that maybe the diode is entering some point where it is becoming influenced by other elements of energy that we have not quite determine.

I was thinking that maybe some form of cosmic radiation was being detected via the diode while the slope of each tooth was at some happy medium?

This was done in a small faraday cage I constructed for some other project to help reduce any possible EMF noise around me.

Any way, it was a nice experiment, one that I'll remember.

P.S. I also tried this with some zeners but for some reason I don't get the same type of noise. It seems like they behave a littler differently.

Jamie

It's misdirected. For example, terrorism - how many billions of dollars do we throw at that problem, compared to how many people actually die as a result of terrorist acts? We've lost maybe 40,000 people to terrorism since 9/11, including all our soldiers killed in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars (and adding some, just to make a point). We lose more than that every *year* to I don't know what... maybe the flu? Pretty close, I think - probably closer to about 35,000, but I think you get the point. Flu plus auto accidents, and you've got it covered. But no one loses much sleep over auto accidents or flu, or even heart disease (over a million a year, IIRC).

Sure, we've got people who are afraid of the "radiation" from cell phones, not understanding the distinction between ionizing and non- ionizing radiation. OTOH, maybe there is some subtle harmful effect from low-intensity radio waves. Time will tell.

Throughout the history of technology, there have been all kinds of tragedies caused by the assumption that, if we don't know it's harmful, then it must be harmless. Radiation, X-rays, various chemicals (mercury comes to mind, but also other heavy metals, hydrocarbons including the halogenated hydrocarbons, silica, etc.), hell, even medicines. Arsenic used to be prescribed for minor illnesses. Cigarettes were prescribed as a treatment for asthma.

But I don't advocate living in fear. That sucks. What I *do* advocate is to use our gifts with caution, keeping alert to potential harmful effects and acting on them promptly. Rather than waiting for a tragedy like Minamata or Bhopal, take steps to keep poisons out of the food supply or the air. Keep long-term health records that involve new technologies, in order to detect subtle but potentially harmful effects.

We're *already* on the path of science. The genie is out of the bottle. There really is no going back, because our world is too deeply reliant on science to continue without it. What is needed is to continue, but to be careful as we move forward.

--
There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX.
We don't believe this to be a coincidence.
		-- Jeremy S. Anderson

Agreed. I think most of theology came about because someone was ashamed to say, "I don't know." So he made up some BS that became dogma; and then its logical inconsistencies required other BS, and so on, until you get a huge, Gothic structure built on bullshit.

But I do think that some people are comforted by made-up stories about how things are, and they would prefer this to being unsure about how they are. A false certainty, rather than a realistic doubt. They would be the ones who would adopt or invent a belief system to fill in the gaps of our knowledge.

My only objection to this is that so many of these people try to shove their comforting myths down other peoples' throats as though it were the truth. I guess it's easier to believe the made-up stories, if you manage to convince others that they're true...

--
Your education begins where what is called your education is over.