Problem with the two slit experiment, Observing later

Hi C2,

Once again we have this disagreement about "wavefunctions" being able to interfere. Nothing in the box until the "wavefunctions" are collapsed. So what is happening inside an interferometer... waves of "probability"... or waves of electromagnetism?

If we believe in "electromagnetic phenomena" then probability describes a vector field or a complex quantity varying spatially throughout the chamber. Alternatively you could square it and normalize this "effect" over a volume and this gives probability density. Still in the case of interference fringes we know that the build up of the patterns over time is a continuous process made with discrete photon events. To do this something like this standing wave phenomena shown below must occur inside the cavity. You can't say that this does not exist just because we are not measuring it since a "flux" of energy is passing through the cavity.

The "flux" is a measurable. Instantaneously probability is not. There are no probability meters. Its a Gedanken Instrument. Every experiment uses real measurables and not direct probability which is an "abstraction". Admittedly once you measure the photon "flux" you have destroyed it but we know that if the measurements were not taken the "flux" would eventually impinge on the screens and produce the predicted pattern. Moving the screen toward the slits in small increments and observing the dynamic pattern would show slices of something in between the previous positions of the screen and the slit. It is hard to completely abstract that concept and insist that everywhere else our photon is exploring all paths including the points in between.

As a believer in Bohmian Mechanics I believe that the view that something is actually traveling in the space is acceptable and it should not be termed probability since it has never been "collapsed" and read. A small test probe could be placed in the cavity and a continuous measurement made. Some pattern will be lost but "who cares". It is not about saying that a particle interpretation is "wrong"... it actually gives excellent results. What I am saying is have a look at the wave interpretation instead and find out how much missing information is being lost through that "projection". The maths is the same except where a particle in a box has probability, a wave in a box has complex patterns related to measurables.

Waves are extended objects and particles are not. You can force the physics to fit the unnatural state but you really gain nothing except a whole lot of necessary quantum postulates to compensate for the shortcomings. I know that both ways work. But one way is easier to work with (particles) but in the end restricts the physics.

Cheers

This post has been edited by Good Elf on Oct 29 2006, 04:09 PM

Hi Good Elf,

To answer such questions we need the modified MM, we need to feed it single photons and say how a single photon can interfere with itself under such circumstances. Can you give an EM explanation?

-C2.

Please assume everything is 'perfect' .. it really doesn't affect the principle.

This post has been edited by Confused2 on Oct 29 2006, 04:50 PM

Hey C2 and Good Elf,

I think C2 wrapped it up all in one sentence!

And when we "go quantum", it all boils down to the properties that we choose to measure and the way in which we measure them. Beyond that, the rest is about "interpretation". Personally, I have not found a palatable interpretation of QM. TIQM comes the closest to being "reasonable" with respect to EM, as long as you can accept that the advanced waves of the photons that comprise the Hubble Deep Field picture, emanate from the "detector" in the telescope that was constructed ~13 Gyrs after the retarded waves of these same photons were emitted from the sources. But since they travel in the reverse time direction, this should actually make sense!

On that note, did either of you see this article? Light's Most Exotic Trick Yet: So Fast it Goes ... Backwards? I would like to read the actual paper but cannot find a copy to share. If by chance, someone has a link to it, please post. The experiment is done with a light "pulse" but it does not discuss any of the details. I wonder if the same type of experiment could be done with individual, long wavelength, photons.


EDIT: Maybe I am reading to much into this, but did you take note of Fig. 3©. in the paper Experimental interference of independent photons ?

I had always assumed distinguishability had to be either/or.

This post has been edited by Why Not? on Oct 29 2006, 07:43 PM

Hi Confused2,

To answer such questions we need the modified MM, we need to feed it single photons and say how a single photon can interfere with itself under such circumstances. Can you give an EM explanation?

I could simply say that Quantum Mechanics makes no attempt to explain it ... it is "shut up and calculate". Sure .... it works! What I am saying is this works too. The difference is this gives more details about the process. This "detail" leads to the examination of higher dimensions.

How does it work? I suppose you are asking me a question of how can a single photon being launched into the Universe can know instantly at that moment of being launched what the future state of the Universe will be since we observers do not. Once more it is also relying on the past state of the "unknown" Universe to also "work things out" according to the Wheeler-Feynman Theory.

The electromagnetic effect we are seeing "propagating" through spacetime is like a shadow from a higher space... quantum space... the interior nature of which we are not privy to... it hides the events occurring in that space from us. In that reciprocal space what is enormously large in our Universe is "reciprocally" nearly infinitely small and things which are small in our Universe are as large as they can be in reciprocal space. The exterior/interior geometry of this space is hyper-spherical but finite in size. In fact some of these "spheres" are sub-atomic particles and the descriptions are simply the way we choose to describe these "marbles", from the inside or from the outside. The technical term for this kind of space is a Hilbert space (in particular an anti-de sitter space, I recently posted a link to a Scientific American article by Juan Maldacena on this phenomenon) and it is the theory that defines all "interior" particle spaces known including QED and QCD. The Holographic Principle and the AdS/CFT correspondence are not just pure theory they represent a thoroughly mathematically tested concept.
Wikipedia: AdS/CFT correspondence
The consequences of which are as I have stated lead to geometries in reciprocal spaces which are reciprocal spatial frequencies and temporal frequency instead of space and time respectively. Quantum Field Theory simply becomes a conformal field theory in that space and not the primary reason for the phenomena after all. QFT is then neatly tucked into the "Holographic Universe" as one of the many pieces of the jigsaw for a Theory of Everything. Now you may wonder "why" the Universe is built this way but other than saying that it makes Universes easy to construct on "optical" principles what I will say is "because".... the answer you give a child when to fully answer the question would take a University Course in Physics. Don't worry we elves were not born with this stuff and we did not ingest it with our mothers milk either.

None of us are unfamiliar with this "game". When we were in the lower classes of school and we had science class the teachers would condescendingly pontificate about the mysteries of the Universe and oversimplify and reduce phenomena to the most simple of terms. As our minds matured the story was retold in such a way that at first we thought they were telling us a lie because we had already learned the laws of Newton and now they were telling us about Einstein and a whole new batch of laws. Why did they lie to us in the first place? The answer is "because"...

We now realize that the Laws of Newton are far too simple to describe everything, especially the extended nature of extended irregular particles. The descriptions of primary electric charges as points is impossible and we add to the theory to prevent difficulties arising, we have learned fudge techniques to extend these ideas into the 21st Century but in the end they will always be "incomplete". What we all learn is to get over it and see what we can do to solve things in relationship to the new regime we need to address. This must happen at the interface of every new science. This topic I am referring to is definitely new science... at least an interpretation of it that provides insight into the way the Universe really works using principles that do not involve probability. The quanta in this theory arise naturally from the discrete nature of sources (they start at some time and then they finish) and not from some innate noisy behavior of the universe around the distance of a Planck Length.

What science is learning with all those new materials and processes that exploit this effect is a way to see things without the limitations once thought "built into" the Universe as some unbreakable law. For example negative refractive index materials allow us to resolve the inner details of evanescent regions of particles without restriction other than pure optical restrictions of element size. We can regularly resolve details below the wavelength of light used to probe it. This immediately breaks the Heisenberg Uncertainty Relationship as it has been interpreted for nearly a Century. Optical devices have already been built that do just this and you can actually buy them now. Theoretically the ultimate resolution of such devices does not depend on the Laws of Physics but on the Laws of Metamaterial Manufacture and our ability to limit defects in its construction. The more perfectly we build the materials the more details we will know about the subatomic realm at optical frequencies by "reconstruction" using the evanescent waves.

"Why Not?" has posted yet another unusual phenomena that relates to some of the recent discoveries regarding electromagnetic propagation. These are "real" examples of that complex principle previously noted. I could not find this example so it took Why Not to get it for us... Thanks Why Not. The phase and group velocities can be quite different to what we might expect when dealing with "optics". What I have said many times over and over is that the Schrodinger Wave Equation is an equation that describes the behavior of "particles" in a cavity. This has direct analog in the Electromagnetic Wave Equation in the same cavity.


These two equations describe the same things, one as particles and the other as waves. Your choice... Clearly they describe cavities depending on the kind of cavity. The cavity may be an atomic cavity or it may be a cavity the size of the universe with all sorts of obstructions in it. The equation explains all possibilities but obviously the functions are going to be a little tricky.
The resemblances in mathematical structures between the optical constants of artificial electromagnetic media and some physical phenomena in field theory: Jian Qi Shen
See page 2 and 3. I am not hiding anything about this and we have all known about it for an awful long time but as long as we are unable to grasp what is required then we remain stuck in Kindergarten. The limiting behavior for photons (which also can be trapped in cavities) relate to different geometries inside or outside the cavity (reciprocals) and in order to map across these two regions as if "distances" and "times" mean the same, the idea of renormalization was required to stop functions like 1/x "blowing up" as x -> 0. We can try and do this with string theory... and it works after a fashion. Does this explain your question?

Cheers

Everyone ..


The paper linked by WN? is a fine example of the "interpretation" of a backwards moving wave. This is an example of the weak methodology that is being used to describe the "phenomenon".

Snips from the article:

The basic experiments that we are talking about. "Splitting" waves, creating a reference (by beat frequencies) though (by different methods) changing the parameters of 1 arm (or more) of the wave, and then comparing it back to the reference (unchanged) wave. DSE, MME, etc

This is the heart of the problem (of current models).
The 1/2 wave (peak) is INDISTINGUISHABLE from the "fundamental" (the unchanged arm) and its' first (Primary) harmonic. This is because the beat frequencies are THE SAME. We are "measuring" the same quanta of energy; E = hf .

The article goes on to say:

(emphasis added)

Science defines the peak as the real part, because it is what RESONATES with the measuring device. This is where information is conveyed to us, the observers.

This last quote sums up the article, as well as this conversation. The "leading edge" has a frequency too! It "carries" the information. The PEAK frequency makes the counter "click", so we determine/define that as REAL. Is it any more real than the frequency that is doing "the work"?

The equations in place DISREGARD these other frequencies. That is why experimental evidence continues to "refine" the theories. Only a "probabilistic" approach will give the right answer (most of the time).



C2, do you really want the EM version of this? The third order "susceptibility" (nonlinear) is a 4th rank tensor with 81 elements. Each element is a sum of 48 terms. [M. D. Levenson and S. S. Kano, Introduction to Nonlinear Laser Spectroscopy, (Academic Press, San Diego, 1988)] Then, each coupling having its' own polarization, which is inserted into Maxwell's equations, which creates (from the fields) 4 coupled wave equations. This is about 1/2 way, because those equations are not solvable in general. Plane wave solutions are then "uncoupled" to solve the field intensities. [N. Bloembergen, “Recent Progress in Four-Wave Mixing Spectroscopy,” in Laser Spectroscopy IV, edited by H. Walther and K. W. Rothe, (Springer, Berlin, 1979)] This is a lot of "cut and paste" for me, but I might find something to PM to you.

This is the "great variety" of resonance; the reason for so many darn chords! (~10,000) However, the relative "sucess" of Rock & Roll (compared to the great Symphonies) tells us that a simple combination of 3 chords will usually do the trick!


regards,

T.Roc



This post has been edited by TRoc on Oct 30 2006, 06:45 PM

truncated... posting error... See next post

This post has been edited by Good Elf on Oct 31 2006, 04:49 PM

Hi TRoc,

(emphasis added)

Science defines the peak as the real part, because it is what RESONATES with the measuring device. This is where information is conveyed to us, the observers.

This last quote sums up the article, as well as this conversation. The "leading edge" has a frequency too! It "carries" the information. The PEAK frequency makes the counter "click", so we determine/define that as REAL. Is it any more real than the frequency that is doing "the work"?

The equations in place DISREGARD these other frequencies. That is why experimental evidence continues to "refine" the theories. Only a "probabilistic" approach will give the right answer (most of the time).

Any "pure" measuring instrument will not normally "see" the"pulse" as being composed classically of a mixture of frequencies but they all blend together as a kind of "cloud" of "measurement". The classic measuring instruments will ignore much of the phase and this "projects" the "packet" into a moving "impulse" rather than its true quality which is not being measured. If we could decompose this "cloud" into its true components we would see two simultaneous planes of information a real plane and the complex conjugate plane. The problem with a lot of physics is the inability to record (perhaps I should say the inattention to the frequency and phase information) the full picture. It would come as a surprise to many that a wave is far more complex than a plane sinusoid.

Many analytical tools try and reduce this complexity since in the past our ability to analyze this detail has lagged our instrumentation. It has led to an incomplete description of physical phenomena. Have a look at this applet that describes various complex plane Fourier operations that describe the "simple" pulse train as a complex Fourier multiple plane function...
Harmonic Phasors and the Fourier Series
My suggestion, after a little play, check out the nature of the impulse train and the various windowing functions and "play" them. Notice the multiple quadrant nature of the "phasors". These could be probability but probability (a scaler) will not construct this complex pulse. Make sure you use a largish number of "harmonics" to construct this picture.

Try a sketch of a rough sine wave (both +ve and -ve amplitude) in the right hand pane and then see where this results in complex plane physics. Draw it in different positions at different phases. Watch the tiny vector sweeping and spinning in that complex space constructing the path in a complex space. These correlate with the Feynman Constructions of the "seek all paths" methods as previously discussed and this is the way construction would have to proceed in "real physics" measuring the necessary quantities to capture that complex plane picture. Alternatively a "snapshot" can be made of this information creating "Holograms". Now extend this into the Wheeler-Feynman Emitter-Absorber Theory. Then make the next step into an "Atomic Universe" in which phenomena propagate in complex space and "construction" is "a-temporal".

The idea is very difficult to grasp but it needs to be "played with" a bit to see just what may be happening. Naturally, "real waves" are "extended objects" in complex space not flat lines you see here on a screen. They are more than just three dimensional... you got to add in all the "complex dimensions" too in the complex directions of {ix,iy,iz}. Next question is are they real??? Of course they are... ask any Radio Technician. Are these "strings" or "membranes"?

Cheers

...

..silence...

OK, C2, I didn't mention the elimination of redundancies. You will not end up with as many terms as that. For example, in the music chords, we have 10 octaves of sound to deal with, so we are immediately down to ~ 1000. Then there are chord types like the Minor, the seventh, etc. This is not a music primer, though; the point there is that there are "degrees of resonance" that do very little to change the fundamental frequency, which is what we are looking for.

But, you will still have to take your table, and then do your nonlinear Schroedinger equation on them. Then you have the probabilities. That is not my personal method of choice. If those equations were weapons, I couldn't fight my way out of a paper bag with them! If you take away my Sci. calculator, Maxima, and a few resource books, I will fail! I have heard about a way to represent this table of resonant possibilities, but not seen it. This is exactly what I have done, though. The Resonance Matrix show all the possibilities, and you can estimate reactions (of frequencies in a shared medium) by simple symmetrical "mapping".

Let me get back on track.


Everyone:

If the "leading edge" of a wave, represented by upper harmonic frequencies of said wave, contain all the information necessary for "recreation" at the other end, then you can get the results from my last post (WN?'s link). I think everyone can follow that logic.

Now, let's take this thinking to the DSE. The "tooth" that is between the slits has a specific, finite width. This "tooth" is REFLECTING BACK the upper harmonics of the wave; remember, this device is very accurately aimed at the slits. The "front scattering" of the higher harmonics would be "near perfect".

If (radar too) the front of the wave has the "information" in it, and the information is a resonance, and the pattern on the screen (light/dark bands) represents this resonance, what happens if we take away the information?

A worm is a strange, but interesting analogy: if we cut off its' head, thus its' "information", its' movement will seem "unpredictable", compared to when it still had its' head. The worm has a very SLOW frequency: eventually, if our experiment was long enough, its' head would grow back, and the "pattern" of its' movement would return.

Light is the opposite, it is so fast, that NO time expires between the coupled oscillations (E & M). In order to lengthen the TIME available for the "observation", we must "bounce it around" for a bit. This is what is happening in the cavity of the laser. The EM waves systematically remove any frequencies that have a BEAT, because the EM wave wants NO TIME to be between them.

Whether you want to trace the front scattered wave all the way back into the laser, or consider the "chamber" between the laser and the slit as a new cavity, the results are the same. The "over-some-time", apparently "random" build up of the resonance pattern on the screen. This is not "mystical". The part of the wave that was removed, slowly (and "randomly") gets absorbed back into parts of the wave that are going through the slits. (very much like water molecules caught up in an eddy on the side of the river, they go with the flow eventually)

One hole or slit: no pattern. The information goes through "uncut" into equal, harmonic pieces, and remains as "one".

Open the side door : no pattern. The instructions for the pattern is "lost".

"Erasing" the information in the "which way path" is the same. That path contains the beat frequencies, and the information necessary to produce the pattern.

This is a self consistent explanation, with NO HOLES, or "quantum weirdness". I'm not asking you to believe a 1mm particle will go through a .5mm slit. I'm not asking you to believe that the "single photon" goes along every possible path to the screen at the same time. I am not asking for a waiver on the "repeatability" of this experiment by my peers. (this is what "probabilities" do) My approach is repeatable, and predictive, as well as simple.


ciao!

T.Roc



This post has been edited by TRoc on Oct 31 2006, 06:39 PM

Hi GE,

Our posts "crossed paths"; I'm not ignoring you.

The only thing I can say, is you are right about the sine wave, Fourier transform, and dimensions.

The reason I continue to "debate" is that my method is dimensionless.

This really changes the expectations!


I'd like to invite a new member to this conversation. I am posting a copy of his/her post, and making them aware of that.

For now, I'm just going to say (about crossed beams of light) is that IF they are not at just the right angles to each other, they will not "interact" in a "visible" way. The Ultimate Beat frequency approaches ZERO because of the constant speed of light. There is no time between the coupled E/M wave to interact with another EM wave. Unless we change the geometry.


ciao!

T.Roc



This post has been edited by TRoc on Oct 31 2006, 07:14 PM

T.Roc, I will try to catch up on prior discussions before making any comments
or raising questions.

Laserlight

T.Roc there has been a lot of very enlightened and passionate dialog
from many people encompassing a plethora of varying topics regarding
everything from nature of light, energy, theoretical physics, mathematics,
experimental methods, etc. I am pleasantly amazed at the non-confrontational
free expression of opinions by so many. Kudo's to you all!

Back to the original question regarding the problem with the two slit experiment.

I think the answer is fairly simple when comparing a light stream of
randomly oriented photons entering two slits vs a single photon entering
only 1 slit of the same 2 slit experimental device.

A non-cohesive beam of white light is comprised of randomly oriented photons
at different energy levels, with different spectral frequencies, and each with its
own E and H field, and wavelength. Each of these randomly oriented quantum
energy packets will pass thru the slits differently, they won't all pass thru the
slits the same way. Some will pass straight thru, others will interact with the
electric and magnetic molecular fields of sidewalls of the slit "cavity" and bounce
off at a tangent to the surface of the walls like a billiard ball, which will effectively
change their directionality as they exit the output of the slit. Depending upon
the cavity width of the slit certain frequencies might even have too large of
a wavelength and be reflected back toward the source, like the effect of an
rf filter screen. It is possible that there are also some phase interactions of the
E and H fields of the various quantum packets that might change the directionality component of the interacting photons causing them to scatter or disperse. The resultant observed interference wave patterns are an exaple of standing wave interference. This could be from doppler
like timing reflections from the end wall of the exit cavity, or coherence interactions as the scattered photons become "phased" by their
timing delays induced as they traversed the cavities of
the slits.

In the case of an individual single frequency photon (where the photon is
a discrete quantum unit) which is small enough to pass thru one slit or the
other (but not both slits simultaneously), it will either go straight thru, or if it
enters the slit at a slightly skewed incidence angle close to a sidewall of the slit
cavity, it might have an EM field interaction with the atoms of the sidewalls and
bounce off at a tangent before striking the photodetector surface. It would be
a good experiment to map the impact marker patterns locations on the
sensor to measure the amount of scatter from interaction with the slit cavity.

Your comments and disagreements are welcome.
Laserlight

You might find this article on nanoparticle antenna focusing of light interesting
it explains the interaction of laserlight on a tuned nano antenna.....

--------
How to Burn a Three Terabyte CD
Technology Review ^ | 15 September 2006 | Kate Greene


A new nano-optical device can focus laser light tighter than traditional optics, which could lead to higher-density data storage.

A computer simulation of the optical nano antenna that Harvard researchers have fabricated. Consisting of two gold-coated nano rods separated by a 30-nanometer gap, the antenna can focus light from a commercial laser to a spot just 40 nanometers wide. It could be used to write terabytes, rather than gigabytes, of data to a CD or DVD. (Credit: Ertugrul Cubukcu)

As gigabytes of movies, pictures, audio, and text fill up more and more CDs and DVDs, there's clearly a need for better ways to save more data. A research team at Harvard University has developed a technique that could help to significantly boost the capacity of conventional optical discs. They've fabricated a nano antenna--built directly onto an inexpensive, off-the-shelf laser--that focuses light to a much smaller spot size than is possible with even the best traditional lenses, potentially enabling more bits to be written onto an optical disc.


The storage capacity of a disc increases as the wavelength of light used to write data to it decreases; CDs are written and read using light with a wavelength of 780 nanometers, DVDs use 650 nanometers, and HD-DVDs and Blu-ray discs use 405 nanometers. Wavelengths shorter than 405 nanometers would require light sources far too expensive for consumer electronics.


The problem is that conventional lenses can only focus light to half their wavelength, a physical barrier called the diffraction limit. The Harvard researchers sidestepped this limit, however, by abandoning traditional optics in favor of nano-optical techniques. "We can get around the wavelength limitation by using an antenna," says Ken Crozier, assistant professor of electrical engineering at Harvard.


The team of Crozier, Federico Capasso, professor of applied physics at the university, and graduate students Eric Kort and Ertugrul Cubukcu designed the optical antenna to focus light from a commercial laser (with a wavelength of 830 nanometers) to a spot size of 40 nanometers. With this resolution, "you'd be able to pack more than three terabytes [3,000 gigabytes] worth of data onto something the size of a CD," Crozier estimates. That's enough to hold more than 300 feature-length movies. By comparison, a dual-layer HD-DVD or Blu-ray disc can hold 30 gigabytes or 50 gigabytes, respectively.


<B>The antenna consists of two gold-coated nano rods, separated by a 30-nanometer-wide gap, according to Crozier. When light from the laser hits the nano rods, it applies a force to the electrons in the gold, nudging them out of place. The electrons don't stay displaced for long, however, and are pulled back toward their original position. But they overshoot it, Crozier says, and bounce back out of place, oscillating "like a mass on a spring."


These oscillating electrons affect the tiny gap between the nano rods. If you took a snapshot of the antenna, Crozier says, you'd see that positive charges collect on one side of the gap, and negative charges on the other. The nano rods and gap act as a tiny capacitor--with opposite charges on opposite sides of the gap--that effectively concentrates the energy from the laser light into a spot about the size of the gap. This spot maintains its size to about 10 nanometers away from the antenna before it starts to spread out.</B>



Although the 10-nanometer gap is minuscule, researchers could build a new type of optical reading and writing head using the technology, suggests Crozier. The magnetic storage industry, he points out, works with a similarly small gap between the head and medium.


Using nano antennas to focus optical light is not an entirely new idea, Crozier says, but their work, published in Applied Physics Letters, is the first time an antenna has been integrated directly onto a laser. This offers an advantage in production because the light source and antenna are in one package. "It's extremely compact and easier to use because alignment with the laser and the antenna is all done in fabrication," he says.


There's a lot of research activity to reduce the spot size of light, but it's especially attractive to the data storage industry, says Bae-Ian Wu, a research scientist in the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT. Using a nano antenna is just one way to gain "super resolution smaller than the wavelength of light." But, he says, the Harvard researchers work "is very good in the sense that they are doing optical experiments to back up their theory, while some papers are only in the realm of theory." The Harvard scientists, he adds, "just did it."


Crozier says his team is exploring fabrication techniques that can further decrease the spot size to 20 nanometers. They're also exploring alternatives to the gold metal that currently coats their nano rods. Silver, for instance, could focus light more efficiently than gold at the wavelengths used by the consumer electronics industry.

This post has been edited by Laserlight on Nov 1 2006, 03:47 AM

Hi Confused2, yquantum, Laserlight, RealityCheck, Ron, Why Not?, Areal, TRoc, Zephir et al,

I have had a read of the original paper in Science and this is what it says in part...

It seems to me that a backward propagation in time of one pulse as shown in the animation within the glass block is consistent with a reflection every bit as real as the incoming pulse but opposite in phase. As this is happening a "duplicate" pulse is exiting the block to the right carrying the energy 'forward". A form of "optical antimatter" as described by John Pendry in some of his papers. Comments welcome.
Reversing Light: Negative Refraction, John B. Pendry and David R. Smith
This is an "old" reference to Pendry and recently he is gaining a lot of publicity from inventing a practical "Invisibility Cloak" using similiar techniques to that on the front page of this article. Metamaterials have since been developed in the optical region to create many of the proposed developments noted in this paper. Shen's Paper would be also a great intro to a lot of these phenomena as noted above...
The resemblances in mathematical structures between the optical constants of artificial electromagnetic media and some physical phenomena in field theory: Jian Qi Shen

Cheers

This post has been edited by Good Elf on Nov 1 2006, 04:11 PM

GE- "optical antimatter?" more like reflected optical inversion...keep in mind
that when you look into a mirror the image is always reversed. JMHO.
Laserlight

This post has been edited by Laserlight on Nov 1 2006, 04:10 PM

Hi laserlight,

Point taken, it is an unusual description I will grant you that. In the "real world" optical images never actually "cancel". I am only using the same terminology that Pendry has used in his work. He is the world's leading authority in Photonics. There is a strong analogy between matter / anti-matter reactions and these formerly theoretical optical phenomena, now a practical reality. With Cramer's Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Theory an antiparticle creation annihilation event is identical to a particle traveling back in time... hence the "optical anti-matter" description. This ties in with the Nobel Prize winning Wheeler-Feynman Emitter-Absorber Theory.

Cheers

This post has been edited by Good Elf on Nov 1 2006, 04:22 PM

GE- Hmmm, one might simplify the terminology and say:
"For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction". If this is true in
Newtonian physics, it is likely true at all size scales even at photonic levels.
Is it all just a matter of semanics where the words are different but essentially
saying the same thing? The main idea is that inversion is a reactionary
consequence of physical causality. To call it antimatter and going back in time
is questionable, it is merely a slightly out of phase reflection. IMO.

Laserrlight

This post has been edited by Laserlight on Nov 1 2006, 06:09 PM