From: sarfatti@well.sf.ca.us (Jack Sarfatti)
Subject: Re: Wheeler's delayed choice refuting Ramsay's FTL objection.
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 05:12:22 GMT


OK Ramsay here it is. Wheeler writing in Law Without Law. He's got a simple
Mach-Zehnder interferometer (e.g., Born & Wolf 7.5 p. 314 Fig. 7.51 is like
Wheeler's Fig.4)

"THE BEAM SPLITTER
Of all the idealized experiments ... none is simpler than the beam splitter
of Fig.4.  With the final half-silverd mirror in place the photodetector at
the lower right goes click-click as the successive photons arrive but the
adjacent counter registers nothing."  This is the key point! I Wheeler is
right here, your general point about the phases cancelling out is wrong. If
Wheeler is right then my quantum connection communication experiment will
work because:

1. My experiment is equivlaent to an improved delayed choice double-slit
experiment. Improved because I can delay the choice as to whether there are
complementary fringes at the two receiver counters until after the receiver
photon is counted but before its twin transmitter photon is counted.

2. Wheeler's device has two counters, just like my two receiver counters!
One of Wheeler's counters has quantum "fringe" probability

p(+) = [1 + cos(phi)]/2.

His other counter has the complementary fringe probability

p(-) = [1 - cos(phi)]/2

The case he is talking about in the text is for a sharp value of phi = 0,
for example.  According to you, this is impossible because Wheelers photon
will land at different spots on each counter's photo-sensitive surface and
so there will be a random uniform distribution of phi's which will cancel
out cos(phi) - hence Wheeler is wrong if you are right! According to youe
physical understanding of the limits imposed by the "Heisenberg uncertainty
principle" Wheeler's probabilities should also always be 1/2.  But Wheeler
is right Ramsay - "and I am right. And we're as right as right can be!"
(Mikado G&S).

In my experiment the photon pair effect adds a factor of sin(2theta) to the
interference term cos(phi) in Wheeler's formula (theta is the mismatch in
orientations of the two crystals that scatter each photon in the same
connected pair.

Wheeler's two paths from his first beam splitter correspond to the e and o
paths of my transmitter photon a (whose o path polarization is rotated 90
degrees by half wave plate.  There are no fringes at the single transmitter
counter because of the distant orthogonal correlations to the receiver
photon b.  Wheeler's two counters correspond precisely to my two receiver
photon b counters because it is the receiver photon b that gets the phase
information phi (also theta!) from the indistinguishability of the e and o
paths of its twin photon a.

The entanglement connection between photons a and b is a communication
channel.  There is spin disentanglement by the half wave plate, but not
space disentanglement which is the bit link. The phase information slips
out from under (formally it's the distributive law of algebra) the a photon
and winds up in the b photon.  It is phase information that is communicated
on the nonlocal connection - and it does not use any wave front propagating
directly between transmitter and receiver.  If you like, an advanced wave
from future detection of a goes back in time to the original emission of
the a-b pair to give photon b the phi and theta information which is then
propagated forward in time to receiver by a retarded wave.

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