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<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span lang="EN-US">Dear David and everyone,</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span lang="EN-US">Sounds as though MIT does a bit of a better job of promoting itself than I do (what a surprise!).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span lang="EN-US">There is nothing much new in looking at single electrons. SLAC was doing this for years in HEP with its linear accelerator.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes">
</span>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!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span lang="EN-US">More important than looking at detecting single electrons (easy enough!) is looking at the underlying<span style="mso-spacerun:yes">
</span>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.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes">
</span>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.
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span lang="EN-US">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. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span lang="EN-US">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.
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span lang="EN-US">Regards, John.</span></p>
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<div style="direction: ltr;" id="divRpF596178"><font face="Tahoma" color="#000000" size="2"><b>From:</b> General [general-bounces+john.williamson=glasgow.ac.uk@lists.natureoflightandparticles.org] on behalf of David Mathes [davidmathes8@yahoo.com]<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Wednesday, April 22, 2015 11:11 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> Nature of Light and Particles - General Discussion<br>
<b>Subject:</b> [General] Articles of interest<br>
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<div id="yiv0683291479yui_3_16_0_1_1429712448364_23051" dir="ltr">Science moves on...two articles of interest for the discussion.</div>
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<div id="yiv0683291479yui_3_16_0_1_1429712448364_23051" dir="ltr">Detecting a single electron</div>
<div id="yiv0683291479yui_3_16_0_1_1429712448364_23051" dir="ltr"><a href="https://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/magnetic-system-detects-single-electrons-0421" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429736042318_26653" target="_blank">https://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/magnetic-system-detects-single-electrons-0421</a><br>
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<div id="yiv0683291479yui_3_16_0_1_1429712448364_23051" dir="ltr">Detecting photons on the fly</div>
<div id="yiv0683291479yui_3_16_0_1_1429712448364_23051" dir="ltr"><a rel="nofollow" href="http://spie.org/x113450.xml" id="yiv0683291479yui_3_16_0_1_1429736042318_25044" target="_blank">http://spie.org/x113450.xml</a></div>
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