[General] Articles of interest

[John Duffield]

"Any communications of this to the outside world needs to get rid of the
speculative, ill informed, or just plain wrong stuff that is perfectly ok
within the context of an online discussion or over a pint or two, but not ok
at all if we wish to make a serious attempt at convincing the outside
world".

 

Well said John.

Regards

John D 

 

From: General
[mailto:general-bounces+johnduffield=btconnect.com at lists.natureoflightandpar
ticles.org] On Behalf Of John Williamson
Sent: 24 April 2015 14:46
To: David Mathes; Nature of Light and Particles - General Discussion
Cc: Manohar .; Nick Bailey; Anthony Booth; Ariane Mandray
Subject: Re: [General] Articles of interest

 

Dear David and everyone,

Sounds as though MIT does a bit of a better job of promoting itself than I
do (what a surprise!).

There is nothing much new in looking at single electrons. SLAC was doing
this for years in HEP with its linear accelerator.  For that matter Millikan
was sensitive to single electrons with his oil-drop experiment - and the
school I went to was enlightened enough to let me do this experiment myself
at the age of sixteen or so. What is marvelous is that they can make it
sound as though detecting one electron something sexy! Robert Hadfield (in
our group) is in the business of detecting single photons and John Weaver
(in our group) has huge capability to look at individual electrons with some
of his work as well. This stuff is widely published!

More important than looking at detecting single electrons (easy enough!) is
looking at the underlying  sub-electron structure. Back in the late 1980's
and early 1990's I was in the business of looking at just that. I designed a
single electron electrometer sensitive at down to about a thousandth of the
electron charge. If you look at my Google scholar page you can find several
papers related to this. The device could also be used as a single electron
pump, to deliver a stream of electrons phase locked to the frequency of a
varying gate potential.  My paper (see attached), looking at the electron
sub-structure delivered electrons one-at-a-time and probe the profile of the
individual electron wave-function with a resolution of better than a tenth
of its de Broglie wavelength. This experimental work did not stop when I
left the field of course. Leo Kouwenhoven, in particular, spent many years
investigating my single-electron electrometer device (and creating new ones)
in the last quarter of a century. There is now a very great deal of
experimental information about the inner structure of matter, electrons (and
photons) with which to work. 

What was lacking then, and is still not widely accepted now, is a proper
theoretical framework within which to interpret this inner structure. This
is what we have to do. Firstly develop the theoretical framework and
secondly get the message out. 

We have to convince people we are not crazies and that this is serious, new
science. That is what will be hard. Any communications of this to the
outside world needs to get rid of the speculative , ill informed, or just
plain wrong stuff that is perfectly ok within the context of an online
discussion or over a pint or two, but not ok at all if we wish to make a
serious attempt at convincing the outside world. 

Regards, John.

  _____  

From: General
[general-bounces+john.williamson=glasgow.ac.uk at lists.natureoflightandparticl
es.org] on behalf of David Mathes [davidmathes8 at yahoo.com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 22, 2015 11:11 PM
To: Nature of Light and Particles - General Discussion
Subject: [General] Articles of interest

Science moves on...two articles of interest for the discussion.

 

Detecting a single electron

https://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/magnetic-system-detects-single-electrons-042
1

 

 

Detecting photons on the fly

http://spie.org/x113450.xml

 

 

 

 

 

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