Path: ...!feed.opticnetworks.net!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Jeroen Belleman Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design Subject: Re: Quantum mystics Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2024 22:06:10 +0200 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 53 Message-ID: References: <7lre6j5fibf2cht90dkedmftlej4rlmgr6@4ax.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2024 22:04:02 +0200 (CEST) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="1443e1549f23979441424df84ab651dc"; logging-data="1281765"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1/X4apNkKfrEdU+GpoQrkKe" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:102.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/102.13.0 Cancel-Lock: sha1:NTihWaSomU7v0FFmvPrOGt1zFtQ= In-Reply-To: <7lre6j5fibf2cht90dkedmftlej4rlmgr6@4ax.com> Content-Language: en-US Bytes: 3298 On 6/10/24 23:24, john larkin wrote: > On Mon, 10 Jun 2024 23:15:51 +0200, Jeroen Belleman > wrote: > >> On 6/10/24 20:26, Phil Hobbs wrote: >> >> [Snip...] >> >>> >>> Sticking with the semiclassical picture of photodetection is good, because >>> it avoids almost all of the blunders made by the photons-as-billiard-balls >>> folk, but it doesn’t get you out of the mystery. >>> >>> The really mysterious thing about photodetection is that a given photon (*) >>> >>> incident on a large lossless detector gives rise to exactly one detection >>> event, with probability spatialy and temporally weighted by E**2. >>> >>> Doesn’t seem so bad yet, but consider this: >>> If the detector is large compared with the pulse width/c, distant points on >>> the detector are separated by a spacelike interval. >>> >>> That means that so when point A detects it, there is no way for the >>> information reach point B before the end of the pulse, when E drops to >>> zero, and yet experimentally point B doesn’t detect it. >>> >>> (*) a quantized excitation of a harmonic oscillator mode of the EM field in >>> a given set of boundary conditions) >>> >>> Cheers >>> >>> Phil Hobbs >> >> We don't have single-photon-on-demand sources, nor perfect detectors. >> Both sources and detectors are probabilistic. I'd like to see how >> this argument fares using energy resolving detectors like TESs. >> >> I do not expect the probability of a detection event in one spot to >> be affected instantly by a detection event somewhere else. The >> collapse of the wave function is an attempt to apply statistical >> reasoning to a single event. >> >> Jeroen Belleman > > Higher energy photons, like gamma rays, can be detected with 100% > probability. They pack a lot of energy. > Yes, but you'd need to use quite dense stuff to have a good chance of intercepting it. Lead tungstate is the thing these days. Jeroen Belleman