Added June 18, 1998

Nick Herbert, author of Elemental Mind (Dutton) recently wrote:

"One of the facts of life in physics is that we have evolved very high standards for what we mean by "explanation". By these standards we have (Culbertson, Walker, Hameroff, Safatti notwithstanding) absolutely NO EXPLANATION for ordinary consciousness and even less explanation for psi. All models of mind so far are mere airy fairy tales making little or no contact with the facts. It takes courage and imagination to take part in such a pioneering venture and these researchers should be honored for that, but, despite immense efforts, we are about as far as ever from a true science of mind. This is not for lack of trying but because the HARD PROBLEM is truly hard. In light of our immense ignorance anyone who claims that quantum entanglement can "explain psi" is a mere charlatan. Let us not confuse conjecture with fact. The field of mind science is cluttered with conjectures not one of which even remotely touches the phenomena. Because the state of our science is so paltry it is easy to waste time shooting the breeze with buffoons rather than doing real work. When we discover the Grail it will be evident. Let's get off our asses, onto our horses and on with the Quest."

BH suggests that mind and matter find a common origin in Bohm's implicate order. The implicate order is "beyond space-time and takes process as primary". What is "process"? Does it presuppose "time"? Hiley opens with a great quote from Freeman Dyson's "Disturbing the Universe" that consciousness is not passive but active "forcing the molecular complexes to make choices between one quantum state and another" with "mind inherent in every electron". Consciousness, says Dyson differs "only in degree but not in kind from the processes of choice between quantum states which we call 'chance' when they are made by electrons". Dyson dismisses many-worlds because he thinks that choice is real and not a mere illusion. My Q* <-> P idea is completely consistent with Dyson's idea. Random quantum chance is superceded by non-random post-quantum choice when there is direct back-action from material system point P to the post-quantum potential field Q* that guides P and is shaped by its path X(t) through its configuration space. This is a violation, a distortion of orthodox quantum mechanics. Look at what Edward Teller recently wrote in Science 22 May 1998 about this same problem.

"In a completely deterministic world, what we know of free will in humans is reduced to mere illusion … According to quantum mechanics we cannot exclude the possibility that free will is part of the process by which the future is created. We can think about the creation of the world as incomplete and human beings, indeed all living beings, as making choices left open to probability." p. 1200

Teller is not clear here. He seems to think that free will is possible without a violation of the statistical predictions of quantum theory. He seems to believe in the possibility of a "conscious quantum". Teller dismiss's Bohm's theory with "Attempts have been made to add laws to quantum mechanics to eliminate uncertainty. Such attempts have not only been unsuccessful; they have not even appeared to lead to any interesting results."

Remember that Teller is out of touch with recent developments in Bohm's theory. I spent several hours with him and Yitzak Rabin at Rabbi Pincus Lipner's house about seven years ago when I taught at the Hebrew Academy of San Francisco. Teller is certainly not aware of Brian Josephson's idea on the biological utilization of nonlocality. One of Dennis Sciama's graduate students at Cambridge showed how this is possible if the statistical predictions of quantum theory are distorted. Bohm's theory allows precisely that in a "nonequilibrium" of the hidden variables.

Hiley points out that von Neumann introduced "subjective perception as a necessary feature of quantum mechanics". Wigner then said that "mind is necessary to complete quantum mechanics."

Hiley cites Lockwood (Oxford) who argues for state selection. Again it is not clear if Lockwood proposes state selection as a post-quantum effect that violates quantum theory rather than a loophole inside the window of opportunity of R-collapse the way Ed Teller mistakenly IMHO thinks of it. Hiley writes of Lockwood "He argued that it is consciousness that chooses a state of the observed system in terms of some favored set of observables relevant to the brain system." It is one thing to choose the set of observables. You can do that without violating one-way Q -> P quantum theory. It is quite another thing to choose the actual common eigenstate within that choice of compatible (commuting) observables. That is the post-quantum "orch" of Penrose's "orch OR" that violates quantum mechanics and opens Pandora's Box of paranormal nonlocal communication with precognitive remote viewing etc. IMHO. Hiley says that this state selection idea is more or less shated by Albert and Loewer and Stapp "they all try to explain the collapse of the wave function through some form of intervention of the brain or mind or consciousness in general". Note how vague this all really is, and how Nick Herbert's remark is quite plausible in this context. Hiley then discusses two separate ideas that Penrose puts forward. First that consciousness needs quantum gravity. Second that consciousness needs noncomputability. Penrose then connects the two. Hiley doesn't buy it.

Hiley then turns from the physicists to the neuroscientists. Lashly showed that visual perception and recall are nonlocally distributed across the brain. Does this require nonlocal quantum entanglements directly in the brain's configuration space beyond classical nerve and chemical messenger propagation in ordinary space? Nick Herbert wrongly calls willingness to consider this idea "charlatanry". Hiley then cites Pribram's picture of the mind-brain as analogous to some kind of hologram. It would have to be a hologram of quantum waves in the brain's higher-dimensional configuration space IMHO although one could also picture a more conventional hologram in ordinary space based on the local complex order parameter of the Frohlich mode that is a non-equilibrium version of a Bose-Einstein condensate (Zohar, Marshall). Hiley cites Schempp who somehow uses the Heisenberg algebra that Larry Crowell wants to deform. Symplectic spinors play a role. I am not at all familiar with this path. Hiley then cites Eccles and Margenau "that mental events act like quantum probabilistic fields and can actually change the spatiotemporal activity of the dendritic networks… it is through intention to act that the probability of the fireing of a synapse is changed so as to produce the desired physical movements in the body." Well this is exactly what -GradQ* does do in my Q* <-> P post-quantum theory which clearly violates orthodox quantum theory while reducing to it in the appropriate limiting case when the spontaneous self-organizing time ts is longer than the environmental decoherence time td. But that is only half of the story. One must not only show how mind moves matter, but also how matter moves mind directly in a "self" way to generate consciousness. That is the back-action. The two together make the spontaneously self-organizing feedback-control loop of free will or the intent in Dyson's sense where "consciousness"differs "only in degree but not in kind from the processes of choice which we call 'chance' when they are made by electrons."

Let's get to Basil Hiley's bottom line "while it is not possible to conclude that the proposal of the direct intervention of consciousness to explain the 'collapse' of the wave function is without substance, there is very little direct evidence that such a process does actually occur. … such an intervention is not necessary … I would like to propose a different way … we will have to go beyond the present quantum formalism and will almost certainly have to introduce radically new ideas."

Therefore, Hiley agrees with me to the extent that any physical theory of consciousness must be post-quantum beyond quantum theory as presently understood. Teller, Stapp and others are not clear enough about this. Hiley does not agree with me all the way of course. Hiley does not think my Q* <-> P idea is radical enough!

If we think in terms of ordinary one-way Q -> P quantum theory, the ordinary notion of "collapse", called "R" by Roger Penrose, is an illusion. Q is essentially a fitness landscape on which P moves in a gradient vector flow just like in classical mechanics. There are qualitatively new features of form-dependence, intensity independence, nonlocality, objective wholeness (e.g.vigier/slides/vigier.htm )

The Q landscape has basins of attraction for the trajectories X(t) of P that are in 1-1 correspondence with the basis of simultaneous eigenfunctions in Hilbert space for a maximal subalgebra of commuting Hermitian observables selected by the "total experimental arrangement". Now if one is making a quantum-like model for the brain-configuration P, then the basins have to select some how. There is no way to do this in quantum mechanics in any non-adhoc way. One can appeal to Zurek's environmentally selected superselection for decoherence. I will come back to all that. This ambiguity is neatly resolved in post-quantum Q* <-> P because the basins of attraction spontaneously self-organize! Nick Herbert et-al has not even begun to see through my glass darkly at the beauty, power and elegance of what I am suggesting here.

Added June 6, 1998

Let's review what Bohm and Hiley say about the problem Nick raised.

Part 1

3.5 on "stationary states" The wave function for the S-state is real. Therefore, the particle's actual momentum is zero. The particle is at rest. "The quantum potential cancels out the space variation of the classical potential leaving a constant energy E that is independent of position. ... More generally... in a non-stationary state, the balance between -gradQ and -gradV will not hold ... if we measure the momentum of the particle in a stationary state .... the probability of obtaining a net momentum p ... is just ||^2 ... for this case we have reproduced the results of the usual interpretation ... all stationary state wave functions can be taken as real... if the energy levels are degenerate, it is possible to form stationary states that are complex linear combinations of these real wave functions ... As an example, let us consider the three P-states .... P+ and P- correspond to motion in a circle around the z-axis .... We see then that by forming complex combinations of real stationary state wave functions ... some of the energy is kinetic. In the case of a free particle (travelling wave) ... the quantum potential is zero and this is why all the energy is kinetic .... a part of what is thought of in classical intuition as kinetic energy is now treated as energy associated with the quantum potential." pp 42-45

Remember, in my extension of these ideas, the quantum potential is "mind stuff". It is "frozen" in a state of suspended animation in this quantum limit where Q directly "informs" its particle, but not vice versa. Q requires its particle's position to be its "source" to awaken into sentience. This is what breathes life into the equations of physics according to my "naked conjecture" that I offer as an alternative to Francis Crick's Un "Astonishing Hypothesis". :-)

Remember, Bohm's quantum potential Q replaces David Deutsch's "shadow particles" in his many-worlds theory. It is Q that does the massive parallel processing in a quantum computer. Therefore, quantum computing is a new kind of "measuring" of Q.

The traditional theory of quantum measurement is very limited based upon a particular kind of interaction Hamiltonian. In particular, there does not appear to be any meaning to what Larry Crowell describes as "self-measurement" in terms of the von Neumann theory. Therefore, any appeal to a Cantor diagonal argument for a strange loop in a quantum Turing machine has no context until precisely what Larry means by "self-measurement" here is spelled out explicitly in a mathematical way.

3.6 of Bohm and Hiley on non-stationary states. Take example of a Gaussian wave packet intially centered at x = 0 with mean momentum zero. The epistemological Copenhagen picture is that Heisenberg's uncertainty principle implies an initial spread of velocities. "But in the causal interpretation, the velocity is always well-defined at each point ... the quantum potential decreases as the wave packet spreads .... as the wave packet spreads, the particle gains kinetic energy, the amount depending upon where it was initially in the packet. This clearly denies the common idea ... that the spread in velocities was there from the start and given by the uncertainty principle. ...

3.7 in a non-stationary state ... the quantum potential ... will be a function of time. This evidently means that the energy of the particle ... will not be conserved in detail. It will however be conserved on the average ... there will be conservation of energy in the classical limit ... p.47 A similar treatment can be given for momentum ... Where does this fluctuating energy and momentum come from? Evidently it can be attributed to the quantum potential which is now a function of time. But as we have seen ... the quantum potential is implied by the guidance condition momentum of particle = grad(phase of wave function), which... is .... broaght about by the activity of the information in the quantum field. The energy and the momentum then come from the self-movement of tha particle and ... may ultimately originate in the vacuum fluctuations." p.48

Note that Bohm and Hily use "causal interpretation" for this "one-way" Q -> P limiting case of my more general post-quantum "two-way" Q* <-> P "self-organizing interpretation". This is a major conceptual difference. It is literally the difference between life (Q* <-> P) and death (Q -> P) IMHO. Furthermore, the no-cloning theorem of quantum computing, Eberhard's theorem that nonlocal communication is impossible, uncontrollable quantum randomness, the ability of quantum computers and radioactive decays to produce truly random sequences of c-bits, randomness of quantum zero-point vacuum fluctuations etc, all come from the one-way "fragility" of Q. It's an entirely different picture when we have the allegedly intrinsically sentient cybernetic feedback-control loop between Q* and P in Q* <-> P post-quantum non-mechanics.

Remember it is Eberhard's theorem that prevents any theory of ordinary consciousness as a quantum phenonomenon. It also prevents and quantum theoretical explanation of the kind of data reported in Dean Radin's book. Post-quantum non-mechanics is a totally new ball game not only for the paranormal but for the physical explanation of how mind in ordinary states of consciousness works.

Back to Bohm and Hiley.

"the one-body case is as best a simplification and an abstraction... in the case of the slits, the particle may be strongly affected by the system through which it has gone, even when it is far away. If we treat the slits and the electron as a single combined system ... the resulting many-body wave function expresses a direct nonlocal interaction between the electron and the slits .... the quantum potential can be large even when the quantum field is small ... complete isolation of any quantum system is actually impossible ... reminiscent of Bohr .... we cannot discuss the properties of a particular system apart from the context of the entire experimental arrangement with the aid of which these properties are observed. But of course, the difference is that we have given a conceptual analysis that explains why all this is happening, whereas for Bohr nothing more can be said ...."

This is also the basic difference between my post-Bohmian non-mechanical explanation of consciousness as Q* <-> P self-organization tweaked by non-self Darwinian environmental pressures an the "orch OR" explanations of Roger Penrose and Henry Stapp. They are both correct as far as they go, but they are both still too vaguely Bohrian for my taste. :-)

Added May 25, 1998

I am using Explorations in Quantum Computing by Colin P Williams and Scott H Clearwater Springer Elos available from amazon.com.

Quantum teleportation requires the nonlocality of the Einstein Podolosky Rosen effect (EPR). Note Murray-Gell Mann, in The Quark and the Jaguar, denies the very existence of nonlocality, but he is in the minority of physicists today on that.

"No action at a distance takes place. … Then what does happen? If, on a particular branch of history, the plane polarization of one photon is measured and thereby specified with certainty, then on the same branch of history the plane polarization of the other photon is also specified with certainty. On a different branch of history the circular polarization of one of the photons may be measured, in which case the circular polarization of both photons is specified with certainty." Murray Gell-Mann, p. 172, The Quark and The Jaguar.

Keith Ramsay explained Gell-Mann's idea better than Gell-Mann.

Jack Sarfatti writes: |Gell-Mann says many-worlds avoids faster than light |action at a distance, but I think he is wrong about that.

Gell-Mann is right. A complete explanation would take longer than I want to devote to it right now. State reduction is the only process in standard quantum mechanics which involves faster-than-light cause-and-effect. State reduction is also the ingredient whose essential purpose is to rid the model of "other worlds".

A simple example of alleged action-at-a-distance would start with a pair of separate particles a,b in a state we could write as [|a+>|b+>+|a->|b->]/sqrt(2). The state of particle a, taken by itself, is represented by a density matrix [|a+>", then the state collapse postulate tells us to drop the |a->|b-> portion of the state, so we are left with the state |a+>|b+> for the two-particle system. The particle "a" has been placed in state |a+> (which also could be represented by the density matrix |a+> If we don't apply the collapse postulate, however, the state of particle a doesn't actually change. What changes is the observer's relationship to it. The observer's interaction with particle "b" changes their relationship to particle "a" because of the prior relationship between "a" and "b" (entanglement). The final state of the pair of particles together with the observer and their measurement apparatus is something like [|a+>|b+>|observer perceives b+ state> +|a->|b->|observer perceives b- state>]/sqrt(2). The two components are poetically known as "worlds".

The "worlds" other than the one which one happens to experience seem irrelevant to some people, but getting rid of them involves this subtle complication when it comes to describing the state of distant objects, involving in particular faster-than-light influences upon them.

Keith Ramsay "Thou Shalt not hunt statistical significance with kramsay@aol.com a shotgun." --Michael Driscoll's 1st commandment

Let's go to the way Williams and Clearwater explain EPR.

"As quantum teleportation relies crucially on such an 'action at a distance' effect, it is important to take a minor diversion to convince you that the effect is real and that reality is, in fact, nonlocal." p. 186 of Explorations in Quantum Computing.

" … the difference between local and nonlocal interactions. A local interaction is one that involves direct contact, or employs an intermediary that is in direct contact … friction and gravity, are local interactions. In the case of friction, the physical contact is mediated by an electromagnetic field, which in turn comes about by the qaction of an intermediary, the carrier of the electromagnetic force, called the photon. Photons travel at the speed of light, which although fast is still finite. Consequently, electromagnetic influences cannot propagate faster than the speed of light in a vacuum." p.186

There are problems with this explanation as well. First of all let us look at Feynman's Lectures starting at the classical level. The problem here is whether, even in classical physics, is the near field confined to the light cone or is it outside the light cone? This is in contrast to the transversely polarized radiative far field. Go to Feynman's Volume I equation 28.3 for the electric field from one point charge q. There are three terms. The first term is er'/r'^2. Note the prime on the r. This is the retardation effect of the past light cone. Feynman writes

"Coulomb's law is wrong. … influences cannot travel faster than a certain fundamental speed c … it is not possible to know where the charge is now and at what distance it is now … because the only thing that can affect the field at a given place and time is the behavior of the charges in the past … the delay is r'/c. So to allow for this time delay we put a little prime on r, meaning how far away it was when the information now arriving at P left q … What appears in our formula is the apparent direction .. the direction it used to be -- the so called retarded direction -- and at the retarded distance r'. That would be easy enough to understand, too, but it is also wrong. The whole thing is much more complicated. There are several more terms. The next term is as though nature were trying to allow for the fact that the effect is retarded… It suggests that we should calculate the delayed Coulomb field and add a correction to it, which is its rate of change times the time delay that we use. Nature seems to be attempting to guess what the field at the present time is going to be … but we are not yet through. There is a third term - the second derivative with respect to t, of the unit vector in the direction of the charge. Now the formula is finished, and that is all there is to the electric field from an arbitrary moving charge."

It is the third term that gives the retarded transversely polarized far field radiation that lies on the forward light cone in this classical limit where quantum effects are allegedly "zero". But our concern here is with the first two terms of Feynman's formula for the near field. One sees that the second term causes a deviation from the light cone which is in the first term.

Now go to Feynman Volume II Fig 26-3

"For a charge moving with a constant speed, the electric field points radially from the "present" position of the charge." The picture shows both the retarded and the present positions of the charge moving at constant speed v along the x axis. Feynman adds "E is in the same direction as rp" This is the present direction from where the charge is at the same moment the field is measured in the given frame where the charge is moving uniformly with velocity v. Feynman continues that for this NEAR FIELD, remember no radiation for uniform motion of the charge, "In short, the electric field is radial from the charge, and the field lines radiate directly out of the charge, just as they do for the stationary charge. Of course, the field isn't exactly the same as for the stationary charge because of all the extra factors of (1 - v^2)…"

But, we have the counter-intuitive purely classical special relativistic result that the field points radially from the present position of the moving charge not the retarded position! Similarly, we expect the same thing for the gravitational field, though that has to also be shown.

Now what about the quantum mechanics? We need to distinguish virtual photons from real photons. The near field is due to exchange of virtual photons that are NOT transversely polarized. Virtual photons are not on the classical light cone. Only real transverse photons are on the classical light cone. Virtual retarded photons can be both inside and outside the forward light cone. Feynman writes "We must accept some very bizarre behavior … photons going faster or slower than the conventional speed of light…." p. 119 of QED (Princeton 1985) for example. See also his original QED papers. So the real situation is not so simple.

Ray Chiao Population Inversion and Superluminality

from Amazing Light Festschrift for Charles Townes (Springer Verlag 1996)

I ask a new question. At least it is new to me. Are there extremely low frequency ELF nonclassical superluminal quantum light wave packets in microtubules that are required for mind to properly function in the brain? Is there a practical application here to quantum computers? Is superluminality required for the conjectured sentient Q* nano-post-quantum computing chip?

Notes by Jack Sarfatti

Population inversion means negative quantum temperature. I ask if this happens in the Frohlich modes in living matter? The pumping of the Frohlich mode gives an inverted effective negative temperature medium for the electric dipoles which may permit superluminal wave packets in the microtubules?

Population inversion in ammonia gas, for example, leads to both superluminality and parelectricity. Parelectricity is not paraelectricity.

"Superluminality can occur when wave packets are tuned to a transparent spectral window outside the gain-line profile of a medium with inverted populations … these wave packets can travel faster than the vacuum speed of light c. This propagation can even be dispersionless …Surprisingly, this is not forbidden by Einstein causality."

"Parelectricity … when zero-frequency electric susceptibility … becomes negative … implies … stable electrostatic configuration of charges … not forbidden by Earnshaw's theorem … levitation of charges above it … purely electrostatic trap for charged particles."

"Ammonia vapor …maser … DC quadratic Stark splitting … negative temperature … therefore negative absorption, or gain. When combined with feedback inside a microwave resonator … led to oscillation … medium … in metastable, … not thermodynamic equilibrium, since lifetime of upper state due to spontaneous emission … very long. The imaginary part of the linear susceptibility of this inverted medium underwent a sign reversal with repect to that for an uninverted one, and this lead to the …. MASER … The real part of the linear susceptibility of the population-inverted medium, … also undergoes a sign reversal leading to further surprises…. some simple consequences of the sign reversal of the polarizability of molecules prepared in the upper state. The polarizability is the effective volume of a molecule. In the upper state this volume is negative. A gas of upper state selected molecules will then have a negative susceptibility neat DC. Therefore the low frequency dielectric constant of this gas will be less than unity … there is little dispersion … near DC any wave packet … whose bandwidth is restricted to low frequencies will travel with little dispersion through the inverted ammonia gas faster than light travels in the vacuum."

Note the reason that Einstein said no faster-than-light signals was that he did not want future causes of past effects. However, Dean Radin, Russell Targ, Fred Alan Wolf and others show actual evidence that human consciousness works with future causes and past effects. Orthodox quantum non-mechanics does not have rectroactive signalling from future to past so it is consistent with Einstein causality. That is Eberhard's theorem, which is a consequence of uncontrollable quantum randomness from conservation of quantum probability current in the higher dimensional configuration space of the combined material source/gauge force- field system P that is beyond spacetime.

Post-quantum non-mechanics has nonlocal communication because of the spontaneously self-organizing feedback control loop between the thought field Q* and its "personally attached" matter system P (in configuration space in general, though that can be approximated by a superfluid order parameter in ordinary space). This new post-quantum feedback-control loop between thought and matter imposes a new sentient non-random order on purely random quantum processes which do not have the loop. Quantum processes are random. Post-quantum processes are not random. This newly recognized post-quantum nonrandomness is the objective signature of our intelligence and free will. This is the proper explanation of "orch" in Penrose's "orch OR" as a Whiteheadian atom of experience at the 300 neuron level conjectured by Hameroff.

1907 Sommerfeld showed superluminal group speed light wave packets in media with anomalous dispersion near an absorption line.

1968 Bludman and Ruderman non-optical superluminal speed of sound in neutron star without violating Einstein causality.

1969 Aharonov, Komar, Susskind superluminal propagation in nonlinear classical fields with unstable configurations, but no violation of Einstein causality. Picture a 1D lattice of unstable inverted pendula with springs coupling nearest neighbors. This lattice has a tachyonic mode where the group speed > c, but the front speed is exactly c.

1990 Scharnhorst and Barton find superluminal quantum light wave packets between Casimir plates. There is also amplification by the Casimir vacuum. This may happen in microtubules.

1994 Hegerfeldt shows faster than light signals in Fermi's two-atom gedankenexperiment. Can this be used in quantum computers?

All inanimate matter obeys Einstein causality. Only post-quantum animate matter (where the self-organizing time between thought (elemental mind) and its personally-attached matter is less than the Darwinian natural selection environmental decoherence time) violates Einstein causality. We would not be conscious if we obeyed Einstein causality.

Note, Einstein causality is obeyed by both classical physics and quantum physics. It is not obeyed in post-quantum physics IMHO. The evidence against Einstein causality is in the work by Dean Radin, Russell Targ, Fred Alan Wolf for living matter as described in papers presented at Tucson III whose abstracts are available on World Wide Web. Links found at http://www.stardrive.com to MSNBC website articles by Erick von Schweber on Tucson III.

Note that quantum computers require two-level atoms acting as qu-bits. Here we are talking about lattices of two-level atoms with inverted populations (negative temperature" acting as a medium for superluminal quantum light wave-packets.

1966 Basov

"experimentally demonstrated faster-than-c propagation of laser pulses whose bandwidth lay inside the gain line profile of an amplifier. They also calculated stationary solutions with propagated faster than c. This … arose from … amplification of the earlier parts of the pulse depleted the population inversion … so that the later parts of the pulse experienced less gain … the peak of the laser pulse was thereby displaced forward relative to the peak of a pulse propagating at the vacuum speed of light … a pulse reshaping process … an idea which will reappear in all the following cases of optical faster-than-c phenomena. Basov noted that … relativistic causality was not violated because a finite pulse could not get ahead of a front of zero intensity which travels at c … Propagation of laser pulses with group velocities greater than c … from gain saturation …. called superluminous propagation."

1993 Chiao

…" propagation … outside the gain-line profile … called superluminal propagation. This effect arises from … real part of the linear susceptibility of an inverted two-level medium suffers a sign change relative to that of a normal, uninverted population …. no experiments have yet demonstrated this … no violation of Einstein causality … Superluminous and superluminal propagation … both …. pulse reshaping … superluminal outside the gain-line profile involves only virtual transitions, no spontaneous emission noise is added to the transmitted pulse, whereas superluminous propagation depends on a real amplification of this pulse, with …. addition of …. noise… superluminous is …. nonlinear …. By contrast, superluminal is … linear. Therefore, … arbitrary shapes … can propagate faster than c without appreciable distortion, provided only than bandwidth … restricted to spectral region of little dispersion."

1970 Garrett and McCumber …

"Gaussian wave packets propagating in region of anomalous dispersion near absorption line … reshaped … to produce a smaller but undistorted Gaussian at the exit face … the peak of the Gaussian appear to move …."

1982 Chu and Wong verified Garrett and McCumber's theory with a real experiment for weak picosecond pulses near exciton absorption line in GaP:N … shows error in Born and Wolf on this.

1993 Chiao et-al show faster-than-light quantum tunneling for single photon Gaussian wavepacket at 1.7c +- 0.2c through multilayer dielectric mirror whose frequency of maximum reflection matches center frequency of photon wave packet.

"the amplitude of the wave packet decayed exponentially within the dielectric layers … the transmitted wave packet was Gaussian … although much smaller in amplitude … the peaks of these single photon wave packets appeared on the far side of the tunnel barrier earlier than the peaks of the control wave packets, which had propagated through air instead of the barrier … each 'click' of a single-photon detector used in coincidence detection registered the arrival of a single individual photon … which had tunneled through the barrier. In 1994 our result was confirmed at the classical field level by … femtosecond laser pulses … Our experimental result is consistent with the theoretical calculations of Eisenbud and Wigner for the tunneling time based on the method of stationary phase …. this is … a pulse reshaping process … the later part … is causally attentuated by reflection more than the earlier part ,,, there is no violation of Einstein causality … Faster than light .. tunneling also observed … in …. microwaves propagating through waveguides beyond cutoff … a possibly genuine violation of Einstein causality ? i.e. Enders & Nimtz J Phys I 3 1089 (1993).

Part 2

Although Einstein causality is not violated, in the strict formal sense of the Kramers-Kronig dispersion relations on the photon-atom scattering amplitudes, it is effectively violated, practically speaking, in terms of application to fast quantum computing circuits using negative temperature population-inverted active lasing "wiring". Thus Chiao writes:

"Although relativistic causality is not violated, the above conclusions still can lead to some surprising consequences. For all practical purposes, all detectors, which must have a finite threshold of detection, when placed on the far side of the medium, would be triggered earlier than if the medium were replaced by the vacuum … the 'click' of a single-photon detector … would also be triggered earlier … For example, consider a two-photon light source, e.g. … cw spontaneous parametric down-conversion, in which a conjugate pair of photons is simultaneously emitted at a slight angle with respect to each other … let two single-photon detectors be placed at equal distances from this source … insert an inverted medium with a group velocity greater than c in the path of one of these photons … the counter following the population-inverted medium will most probably click earlier than the counter … whose path lies entirely in the vacuum." p. 103

Therefore, we can anticipate quantum computers with an effective transfer of information many times the speed of light in vacuum between different parts of the computer even though the front speed, for an unexpected discontinuity is limited by c.

"New information is communicated only when there is an unexpected change, such as a discontinuity, whose arrival time cannot be inferred from the past behavior of the wave…. Such discontinuous wave forms, in contrast to the smooth, finite bandwidth wave packets… contain components at infinite frequency." p. 102

Therefore, in line with Penrose's conjecture, we need not be too surprised if it should turn out that the Planck scale of quantum gravity does have a large effect on "new information" in living matter.

"the extremely high frequency behavior of the index of refraction of any medium … inverted or not … is dominated by the response of nearly free electrons. The inertia of these electrons always causes a retarded response .… so that n(infinite frequency) = 1."

Chiao notes a possible exception to this in vacuum modification Nucl Phys B437, 60 (1995) by Latorre et-al. Puthoff's approach that electron's inertia is from zero point fluctuations modified by Casmir effects in the tiny nano-cavities of electrons in hydrophobic cages inside the protein dimers of the microtubule may be relevant here. There is also the effect of coherent order parameters on the vacuum that must be considered in the sense of the Modanese theory. Note that superradiance does not happen for these superluminal effects. Hameroff talks of superradiance in the microtubules. This needs to be examined more closely how all these effects may come into play at the Eccles Gate of the mind-matter interface.

Part 3

I see from Ray Chiao's brilliant analysis how the microtubules /consciounsess conjecture may partially explain Fred Wolf's, Dean Radin's, and Russell Targ's data analyses at the micro-level in terms of conventional physics.

Lorentz model for refractive index of a completely inverted two-level medium. Each two-level atom in the medium holds a qu-bit for quantum computation. That is the active medium for the superluminal propagation of electromagnetic wave packets is itself a quantum computer if the decoherence time td is longer than the computing time tq. Futhermore, if we use single-photon wavepackets, they are qu-bits in the transverse polarization.

"the sign of the oscillator strength f of the transition is reversed due to population inversion" p. 97

The Lorentz model index of refraction with population-inversion is

n(w) = [1 - wp^2/(wo^2 - w^2 -iw/to)]^1/2

w = frequency, wp = plasma frequency, wo is the resonant frequency of the medium, to is the lifetime of the resonance. Note the minus sign in the second term under the square root. That is normally a + sign if there is positive temperature. This gives an index less than 1 so that c/n > c for phase speed, but also the other group, energy and signal speeds will also go FTL. The plasma frequency is

wp = (4pi|f|Ne^2/m)^1/2

The oscillator strength is essentially the matrix element of the electric dipole displacement between the two atomic states |-> and |+>. That is,

|f| = 2mwo|<-|x|+>|^2/hbar

N is the number density of atoms in the higher energy |+> state. Note, population inversion is not a qu-bit, but a classical bit. The atoms are not in a coherent superposition of |+> and |->. So this form of the active medium is not really set up as a quantum computer. What changes when we do use the active medium also as a quantum computer? Is that possible? Is it interesting? Is the energy exchange between the atoms and the photons consistent with the atoms doing a quantum computation? Do we have to look at the complete entangled photon-atom system as the quantum computer? This is a whole new area of quantum computation in active lasing media.

Typically 1/to << wp << wo, that is the decay rate of the upper-energy |+> atom state is small compared to the collective plasma frequency of the medium which is, in turn small compared to the resonance frequency of the atomic two-level quantum jump.

Fig 10.2 of Chiao plots the real part of the complex-valued index of refraction of transverse real light propagating through the negative temperature population-inverted active masing medium of two-level "atoms".

Ren(w) is less than 1 below the resonance frequency wo of the 2-level atomic electron quantum jump. It is greater than 1 above it.

"the index of refraction near zero frequency is less than unity" It is

n(0) = [1 - (wp/wo)^2]^1/2 < 1 (10.7)

Therefore, d[Ren(w)]/dw -> 0 in DC limit. Thus, there is no dispersion at low frequencies in the active microwave masing medium. Note the Frohlich frequency in living matter is also in this region. The microtubules may act like the ammonia molecules? "Consider a classical finite-bandwidth wave packet … carrier frequency … 1GHz (like the next generation of Intel chips JS) and spectrum far below the resonance …. 24 GHz in ammonia … Let this wave packet be incident on … a gas of [ammonia] molecules prepared entirely in the upper state." These are c-bits not qu-bits. …small amplitudes … only linear response …" The DC group velocity is also c/n(0) because there is no dispersion there. Inverted populations of ammonia gas may occur naturally in the interstellar medium pumped by violent events from pulsars, black holes ….

"… this inverted ammonia medium can temporarily loan part of its stored energy to the forward tail of the wave packet, the energy velocity …. of the energy transported by the wave packet is also superluminal near zero frequency …. The Kramers-Kronig relations necessitate superluminality. …. both parelectricity and superluminality follow from the Kramers-Kronig relations, these results do not depend on the validity of any specific model such as the Lorentz model… causality cannot be violated by these conclusions … the Kramers-Kronig relations imply that any medium with sufficient gain (with or without population inversion) gives rise to superluminal group velocities in transparent spectral windows separate from the region of gain… electrical engineering Bode's law, which relates the gain of a linear amplifier to its phase shift, is equivalent to the Kramers-Kronig … superluminality and parelectricity can … occur in transistor networks with spatially distributed gain."

Remember parelectricity is a way to levitate charge. It is a way to trap charge different from Paul and Penning traps.

Mechanism for Fred Wolf's advanced wave model of Libet's brain waves, Dean Radin's retro PK and Russell Targ's precognition as presented at Tucson III?

Active masing and lasing media reverse the sign of the DC linear electric susceptibility. Therefore, the sign of the phase shift of the forward scattering amplitude from each atom, or each protein dimer in a microtubule pumped by the Frohlich mechanism, is reversed.

"As a result, the transmitted wave packet is advanced rather than retarded, and the index of refraction is now less than unity with little dispersion, leading to superluminal propagation. … any finite-bandwidth wave packet should travel faster than c through this linear inverted medium without appreciable change in shape and amplitude, provided only that its bandwidth lies sufficiently far below resonance. This dispersionless superluminal propagation …. a causal wave form reshaping process in which the earlier parts, i.e., the weak forward tails, undergo virtual amplification by the medium, followed by virtual absorption of the later parts. An advanced wave form is thus produced( versus a retarded one produced in the uninverted medium), which faithfully reproduces an entire incident wave form, no matter how complex, e.g. Beethoven's ninth symphony. Energy is temporarily loaned by the medium to the wave, so that the medium is merely a catalyst … No spontaneous emission noise is added to the transmitted superluminal wave form, since only virtual emissions occur." p. 101 Amazing Light

Clearly, it is plausible that the Frohlich mechanism in living matter will support superluminal microwave propagation in the microtubule infrastructure.

"Superluminal propagation occurs not only in the spectral window near DC" most relevant to neuroscience where the nerve frequencies are far below the Frohlich microwave resonance for collective modes "but also in transparent windows next to a gain line where resonant enhancement can give rise to large effects of much faster than c, infinite, or negative group velocities… within sidebands of the order of the … plasma frequency on either side of this [gain] line … the meaning of negative group velocity is that the peak of the transmitted wave packet leaves the exit face of the sample cell before the peak of the incident wave packet enters the entrance face of this cell … we are performing such an experiment .. using a resonantly-enhanced stimulated Raman effect in an optically pumped rubidium vapor cell … pules propagating in transparent spectral region with bandwidths … hundreds of megahertz adjacent to the Raman gain line should exhibit highly superluminal, indeed, negative group velocities … the Raman transition ,,, hyperfine splitting of 3.036 GHz in ground state of 85Rb …vapor N = 10^1l atoms per cc … observation of superluminal pulse propagation may be done with 0.8 nanosecond pulses whose central frequency is detuned by 170 Mhz to give a group velocity of -c. Thus for a 10 cm cell the pulse arrives 0.7 ns ahead of a pulse which travels through the same distance of vacuum … the pulse duration is about 0.8 ns, Hence the shift in arrival time of the pulse is comparable to its width."

This part should be archived. OK Nick (Herbert), it is morning again. Let's take a fresh look at this Gray ET technology transfer. :-)

We are dealing with what Feynman called the "central mystery of quantum mechanics", the double slit experiment in Wheeler's "delayed choice" version. We add amplitudes before squaring for indistinguishable paths. We square amplitudes before adding for distinguishable paths says Feynman. Gray's point is really very simple, the down-converters split the primary photon into an interference photon and a measurement photon. The measurement photon with the blocker on (in the future delayed choice) "measures" which path the primary, and hence also the interference, photon took in the past. Therefore the receiver detectors A and B in the past fire equally. When the blocker is off in the future there is no path information for the primary or interference photon in the past. Therefore, A will be silent and only B will fire in the past because of what did not actually happen in the future. All of this happens globally self-consistently in loops in time.

So this is the simple picture that would qualitatively explain precognitive remote-viewing and also Schmidt's retro-PK data that Henry Stapp also wrote about. On the other hand we seem to have a violation of Eberhard's theorem. The latter may only be a low complexity i.e. n = 1, limit of the completely random branching filter for n statistically independent photon pairs used in the same self-consistent loop. This seems to be a kind of post-quantum complexity effect beyond orthodox quantum mechanics because the n = 1 limit is more or less in agreement with Eberhard's theorem since the alien Gray nonlocal communicator machine is essentially completely noisy there. Its performance, however, rapidly improves with n as (1-2^-n)/2^-n where only n = 1 corresponds to uncontrollable quantum randomness that we can call the "Eberhard limit". As n increases away from the base line n = 1 we seem to have a kind of post-quantum filtering of the nonlocal message out of the completely random quantum noise. These ETs are pretty clever you must agree! :-)

We also have the papers on nonlocal interferometry where there is, as you say, no local fringe patterns, but the interference is picked up in the cross-correlations between the two ends of the system. Now you claim that this situation is isomorphic to the alien Gray machine. This is plausible, but the answer may be in the random-branching n complexity effect that seems to be able to locally decode the nonlocally encoded message out of the uncontrollable quantum randomness? Is this the post-quantum trick that the extra-terrestrial Grays on Colonel Phillip Corso's time-ships are now teaching us? Can your flying "Pleasure Domes" be far behind? :-)

April 16, 1998

Nick Herbert finds the error in Gray's proposal!

Created With HTML Assistant Pro - 4/16/98

OK Nick I am sending you a $50 bonus today. Your equations today are a step forward and they appear correct. Good work Nick! So far, you are the main contender for the first Bohm Prize. :-)

Bottom line: OK I think you have shown Gray's idea will not work because it is not possible to get destructive interference at receiver C and constructive interference at receiver D for the interference photon for all screen detections at x for the measurement photon with blocker off. The local statistical pattern at the receivers will be the same random noise for both blocker off and blocker on. The main reason for this is that one needs to integrate over all possible places where the measurement photon can be absorbed on the screen in the future. That is the signal from the future will be buried in random noise until a correlation can be made later with data from the future. The correlation does in fact show a nonlocal retroactive influence, but not the kind that can be used to explain things like precognitive remote viewing. That is, Eberhard's theorem generally prevents any purely orthodox quantum explanation of both ordinary consciousness and the paranormal (as in Dean Radin's book, for example).

There is still the matter of Gray's branching combinatorics since your equations below are only for n = 1, but I admit that it seems unlikely that using n pairs will save the day --- unless. The main error Gray appears to make is in his Tables 1 and 2 on "History 2" where he says probability, that there will be the 50-50 pattern at C and D when blocker will be off in future, is zero. The only way Gray's scheme could work would be if one could somehow squeeze all the measurement photons only into the small piece of the screen {x} where we have destructive interference for C and constructive interference for D, but this seems to violate diffraction constraints? This would have to be an entirely new post quantum effect of sentient self-organization controlling quantum randomness with "intent" from Q* <-> P. No Q -> P system can do it.

nick herbert wrote:

Jack

Here's the quantum calculation for Gray's Configuration. To me using a screen is not as elegant as using half-silvered mirrors to combine beams but the conclusion is exactly the same.

Here's the gist of my calculations re Gray (see figure Gray.gif for info on naming conventions) The Fs are photon wavefunctions usually written as "phi"s but phi alas is not an ASCII symbol.

F -> F(1) + F(2)

primary splitter

F(1) -> F(A,1)F(B,1)

doubler #1

F(2) -> F(A,2)F(B,2)

doubler #2

F(A,1) -> E(R)F(C) + F(D)

upper combiner

F(A,2) -> [F(C) + E(R)F(D)]E(A)

For Gray's configuration lower photon waves (B) are combined at a screen rather than combined with half-silvered mirrors.

F(B,1) -> F(B,1,0)E(x)

without blocker

F(B,2) -> F(B,2,0)E*(x)

F(B,1) -> F(B,1,0)E(x)

with blocker in Beam B2

F(B,2) -> F(B,2)

where

E(x) = exp(ikpx)

and p is beam divergence (in radians) from screen normal

k is photon wave number (in cm^-1)

x is distance (in cm) from screen centerline

F(B,1,0) is photon wave amplitude at screen centerline

For convenience we use our freedom to move the screen to make

F(B,1,0) = F(B,2,0) = W

.

Then

F -> W[E(R)F(C) + F(D)]E(x) +W[F(C) + E(R)F(D)}E(A)E(B)E*(x)

this is the final wavefunction for Gray's Device (without inserting the blocker)

and remember that

E(R) = "i" and E(A)E(B) = z

then the Gray wavefunction is proportional to:

F -> [(z + i)CosX - (1 + iz)SinX]F(C) +[(1 + iz)CosX + (z + i)SinX]F(D)

(z + i)CosX - (1 + iz)SinX = 0

i.e. destructive interference at receiver detector C in the past at time t1

(1 + iz)CosX + (z + i)SinX = e^iy

i.e. constructive interference at receiver detector D at t1

Where z is a nonlocal factor and so is X since they both involve descriptions of the measurement photon. Also I am still worried about timing here. You seem to be using a multiple time expression again, like Gray, rather than a single time expression. Of course, this is only for a piece of the entire screen and this is waht Gray forgot. This is what ruins his gedanken experiment - unless somehow his n-complexity analysis saves him. That seems unlikely.

To be clear about this time thing.

Let t1 be the time that interference photon arrives at C or D, let t2 be time blocker is or is not inserted corresponding to measurement photon wave packet passing the blocker region, let t3 be time measurement photon arrives at the screen. Where t > t1 there is no interference photon anymore i.e. F(C) and F(D) are zero if you use the common time picture rather than the multiple time history picture. That is why Fred Alan Wolf was forced to invoke the "strange silence" conjecture. So you have not yet consistently addressed this issue of timing.

Also you have only done the analysis with blocker on, what about blocker off?

Now that we have written down the wave function we can confidently calculate the behavior of the Gray Device for any experiment we desire. For a physicist this should be the first step in the analysis of any experimental proposal.

1 for instance let us choose the phase shift z such that z = +i

F -> cosXF(C) + sinXF(D)

A photon coming out of upper channel C is perfectly correlated with a lower photon going into diffraction pattern CosX

A photon coming out of upper channel D is perfectly correlated with a lower photon going into diffraction pattern SinX

2 Since = where <...> stands for integration over the screen it is obvious that the average number of photons coming out of channel C is equal to average number of photons coming out of channel D. So photons at upper combiner are 50/50 random.

OK - this the key point that kills Gray's machine. This is where unitarity and Eberhard's theorem come in. Is the key idea here that it is impossible to arrange destructive interference at C and constructive interference at D for all points x where the measurement photon will arrive on the screen? Therefore, there is no way to decode the future influence locally before it happens. You can see that there was a future influence in hindsight by correlating data from a small part of the screen with data on firings at C and D -- this is like quantum teleportation and quantum cryptography.

3 As with the half-silvered mirror combiner, it is easy to show that this conclusion (upper photons 50/50 random) is independent of the phase shift z. I have done all of the hard work: the conclusion is easy to calculate.

4 Similarly it is easy to show that putting a beam stop in Beam B2 does not change the 50/50 random quality of events at the upper combiner. Again I leave this trivial calculation to the reader. I have provided all of the parts. Finish the calculation and come to your own conclusion as to whether Gray's configuration can be used (in delayed choice mode) for signalling backwards in time.

Where's that Prize Money? I think I deserve a bonus for doing this entirely in ASCII.

http://members.cruzio.com/~quanta

OK I think you have shown Gray's idea will not work because it is not possible to get destructive interference at C and constructive interference at D for the interference photon for all screen detections at x for the measurement photon. That is the signal from the future will be buried in random noise until a correlation can be made later with data from the future.

Archive on Gray's Idea

March 1998 Physics Today, Sheldon Goldstein's Quantum Theory without Observers-Part1

"It is not at all clear what quantum mechanics is about. What, in fact does quantum mechanics describe?" In Bohm's theory the answer is simple. Quantum mechanics describes the system point P in Q -> P. Q comes from the wave function psi which is an ontological field that personally attaches to P. Classical physics deals only with P. None of the mysticism of the Copenhagen interpretation is needed. It is failing to recognize that the wave function psi is not a complete description of physical reality, that there is also P, that leads to the solipsist epistemological view of Bohr, von Neumann et-al that "there is intrinsically only awareness, observation, measurement." This is not to say that a post-quantum extension of the quantum field from Q to Q* does not explain consciousness as a purely physical phenomenon. In fact it does IMHO. However, this explanation of consciousness as a post-quantum phenomenon does not, in any way, require that consciousness "collapse" the quantum wave function in the von Nemann model of measurement as Wigner proposed, and as Jahn at PEAR assumes.

The Physics Today article is good at explaining the history of the reality and measurement problem. Bohr and Heisenberg were simply wrong although what they proposed was plausible and sensible at the time. Bohm's theory starts from Einstein's insight that the quantum wave function psi does not provide a complete description of observer-independent individual systems P. The individual is symbolized as the system point P at the ontological "beable" level beneath the epistemological statistical level of Hermitian operators in Hilbert space whose root mean square formal expectation values are fluctuations of observables, like position, momentum and energy, over ensembles over identically prepared not too complex inanimate systems P. These ensembles can be "pure" or "mixed". Bell essentially showed that this beable level must be nonlocal and context-dependent. Bohr and Heisenberg, and the many-worlds theorists deny that P's exist at all. They thereby mutilate the seamless interface between the quantum and classical levels that is one of the main beauties of the Bohm pilot-wave theory. Time travel to the past, if it exists, requires a duplication of the system points P that leads to the Deutschean "multiverse" when the P's at that level are "snapshots". I am still working on a rigorous proof of that conjecture. The truth is that Einstein won his debate with Bohr although Bohr was correct to emphasize the wholistic nonlocal and context-dependent qualities of quantum reality. Einstein did not win completely because an objective local quantum reality at the individual "beable" B level is not possible. The beable B is the entire Q -> P complex. That is, B = Q -> P.

"What Einstein desired and Bohr deemed impossible - an observer-free formulation of quantum mechanics, in which the process of measurement can be analyzed in terms of more fundamental concepts - does in fact exist. Moreover, there are three basic categories … decoherent histories, spontaneous localization and pilotwave theories."

The "spontaneous localization" theory is the GRW theory and it is really a consequence of the post-quantum extension of Bohm's pilot wave theory from B = Q -> P to B* = Q* <-> P, if we throw away the P when the latter's complexity Nc is below a certain threshold. That is, spontaneous localization theory of GRW works when Tgrw/N > T*, where Tgrw/Nc = T*. T* is the environmental decoherence time. Tgrw is the GRW time that is of the order of the age of the universe. N is a measure of the complexity of the individual systems P in the ensemble at the statistical level. For example, for single electron and neutron interferometry N = 1. A two-q-bit quantum computer has N = 2. So the complexity of the quantum computer is essentially the number of q-bits that are processed in parallel as a single entangled whole. An analogy can be made with 16 c-bit Windows 3.1 compared to 32 c-bit Windows NT. The jump from 3.1 to NT is analogous of N = 1 jumping to N =2 . The post-quantum regime is when Tgrw/N < T*, so that N > Nc. GRW then has a new physical meaning because spontaneous self-organization overcomes environmental decoherence. Environmental decoherence is the most fundamental form of Darwinian natural selection. Note there is still a third time scale Tq which is the time needed to do a quantum computation. Ordinary quantum computers require Tq < T*. These quantum random computers still obey Tq < Tgrw/N where Tgrw/N > T* . Post quantum nonrandomcomputers, with intrinsic sentience, have Tq < Tgrw/N < T*. That is ordinary q-computers have P's with N's that must be below the complexity threshold Nc = Tgrw/T*., but sentient post-q-computers have P's with N's above the complexity threshold Nc determined primarily by the environmental decoherence time T*. This shows exactly how a complexity threshold characterizes the phase transition from non-sentient quantum random computation to intrinsically-sentient post-quantum non-random computation. Both quantum random and post-quantum non-random computations are beyond the classical computation of the Turing machine in the sense of Penrose's rebuttal of "strong AI".

Goldstein admits that the Bohm theory is "less popular. but arguably, far simpler" than the decoherent histories (DH) approach of Griffiths, Omnes, Gell-Mann and Hartle. There is a problem of consistency in DH "the consistent … assigning of probabilities to objective histories is not easy to achieve … DH assigns probabilities … only to histories belonging to special families … closed under coarse graining, that satisfy a certain decoherence condition". The DH decoherence is not the same as Zurek's environmentally induced decoherence. It is not clear which decoherence is relevant to T* for quantum computers? The histories h are defined as time-ordered sequences of projection operators. "Whether or not a family … satisfies the decoherence condition depends not only on a sequence of times and coarse grained observables at those times but also on the initial … density matrix … as well as the Hamiltonian … the … probability formulas have an entirely different meaning for DH than for orthodox quantum theory. They describe the probability distribution of the actual value of the relevant observable at the time… and not merely the distribution of the value that would be found were the appropriate measurement performed. This difference is the source of a very serious difficulty for DH … probabilities of what objectively happens and not merely of what would be observed upon measurement - is precisely what is precluded by the no-hidden variable theorems of … Gleason … Kochen… and …. Specker… It is a consequence of these theorems that the totality of quantum mechanical probabilities for the various sets of commuting observables is genuinely inconsistent. The ascription of these probabilities to actual simultaneous values, as relative frequenceis of occurrence over an ensemble of systems (a single ensemble for the totality of probabilitie, for the wave function under consideration) involves an inconsistency, albeit a hidden one. For example, the correlations between spin components for a pair of spin-1/2 particles in the singlet state, if consistent, would have to satisfy Bell's inequality. They don't. … as so far, formulated, DH is not well defined." Bohm claims that his theory is not subject to the above theorems. We need to come back to that in detail. Even if the DH approach can be made to work by appending epicyclic fudge factors like "fullness", "maximality", "classicity" in some kind of "optimality condition" to yield the "quasiclassical domain of familiar experience" … the usual macroscopic laws … will emerge together with quantum corrections …. It is, however, not at all clear that the theory thus achieved will possess the simplicity and clarity expected of a fundamental physical theory ". In stark contrast to DH, "spontaneous localization and Bohmian mechanics (a pilot-wave theory) - have already led to the construction of several precise and resonably simple versions of quantum theory without observers". So much for Murray Gell-Mann's false claim in his The Quark and The Jaguar that his allegedly "local" DH theory is the real truth and that the nonlocality of Bohmian mechanics is "the story distorted."

Thanks to Lynda Williams for bringing this issue of Physics Today to my attention.

Bulk quantum computing using nuclear magnetic resonance technology is a breakthrough from a collaboration of scientists from Stanford, Berkeley, MIT and Los Alamos. (I. L Chuang, N Gershenfeld, M.G. Kubinec, D.W. Leung) The paper is not easy to understand in detail. But here are some highlights. First you need to understand the difference between "pure" and "mixed" quantum states. A pure quantum state is maximally coherent. A mixed state is classical probability distribution of pure state. The thermal equilibrium of a large number of identical simple systems that are not interacting with each other is an example of a mixed quantum state. These researchers have experimentally prepared effective pure states inside a liquid in a mixed quantum state. I emphasize that this is not a theoretical possibility but an actual experimental fact.

Everything here is only for orthodox quantum computers. These are "one-way" devices with "fragile" quantum potentials Q in Bohm's language. That is, Q -> P. Eberhard's theorem preventing nonlocal communication and the no-cloning theorem are true in this regime of physical reality where the collective modes of life are not directly participating in the computational process. There is no "spontaneous self-organization" in the sense of Stuart Kauffman's theory here (e.g., At Home in the Universe). The evolution of a quantum computer in time requires a Hamiltonian "energy" operator that has nonlinear interactions between the parts of the computer. The trick is to strike a delicate balance between two conflicting objectives. The first objective is to be able to control the quantum computer using long-range external electromagnetic fields like nuclear magnetic resonance signals on protons inside liquids. This means that the quantum computer has to be coupled strongly enough to an external environment. The second conflicting objective is that this coupling to the external environment must not decohere the quantum computing process. The infinite parallel processing capacity of the quantum computer depends on it not losing its coherence too quickly before it has time to do the job. The inputs and outputs of the quantum computer have to connect to the grosser classical level. There are four steps in a quantum computation.

1. The input has to be an effective pure state if not an actual pure state. That is there has to be enough initial quantum coherence to do the parallel processing.

2. It must be possible to perform arbitrary single q-bit transformations. These are unitary transformations that conserve the flow of probability current in configuration space.

3. Apply universal double q-bit "functions", e.g. "controlled-NOT".

4. Use standard von-Neumann projective measurement (aka "collapse" or "R") to get to a classical output that converts the q-bits to the Shannon c-bits used in classical computers.

All four of these steps must be done inside the coherence time of the quantum computer. That's the hard part "because of the ubiquitous nature of interactions leading to decoherence. Since just a small amount of decoherence can disrupt a quantum computation, quantum decoherence is the largest obstacle on the road to practical quantum computing machines." Some of the material system points P suggested as the "rocklike" component of potential quantum computers (Schrodinger machines) include:

1. spin chains

2. polymers

3. quantum dots

4. isolated magnetic spins

5. trapped ions

6. optical photons

7. nanometer scale quantum electrodynamic cavities

8. lone control electrons inside protein dimers on microtubules

The key fact of nuclear magnetic resonance NMR is the long coherence time that can be thousands of seconds due to the natural isolation of the nucleus. That is the nuclear energy gaps are at least a million times larger than the electronic energy gaps and the random classical thermal fluctuation energies at room temperature. However, NMR is a bulk phenomenon. We detect an average signal over a large ensemble of many molecules. Therefore, it is usually assumed that we cannot achieve steps 1 and 4 above. That is, there is not enough initial quantum coherence for the computation and we cannot get a von-Neumann R-measurement. See Roger Penrose's Shadows of the Mind for a discussion of the R-measurement. For another point of view see Bohm and Hiley's The Undivided Universe. Here comes the breakthrough:

"We have recently shown that NMR can in fact be used to perform quantum computations, using ordinary liquids at room temperature and standard pressure using standard commercial instrumentation."

End of part 1. To be continued.

Thanks to Gary Bekkum for bringing this marvelous development to my attention.

The coherence of quantum computation permits factorization of large integers into primes in polynomial time instead of exponential time. This could destroy classical computer encryption security. One has to be able to controllably manipulate quantum dynamical degrees of freedom while, at the same time, preventing environmentally induced decoherence. This is standard orthodox quantum Q -> P physics. In addition, not yet anticipated in the standard discussions, is the new post-quantum factor of complexity. That is, when the complexity of the computing system, basically the number N of entangled q-bits, reaches a certain threshold Nc, the system kicks into a spontaneously self-organizing intrinsically-sentient post-quantum "elemental mind" mode. There is a characteristic self-organization time scale of T/N for what Penrose calls "orch OR" in Shadows of the Mind. T is a very large number on the order of the age of the universe or even larger. Nanopoulos computes it. It is the same T found in the post-quantum GRW model. Let T* be the standard environmentally induced decoherence time. The post-quantum regime is when T/Nc < T*, where T* is sufficiently long. This is my "naked conjecture". If the naked conjecture is true, quantum random computers may fail to be able to factorize integers into primes in polynomial time when they make the phase transition to post-quantum nonrandom sentience. Why? Because, then they will be exactly like us, they will have inner experiences of qualia and we can't factorize large integers inside our heads intuitively. Therefore, sentience may be a disadvantage for certain narrow technological tasks like hacking into a secure computer network.

Gershenfeld and Chuang write: "multiple pulse nuclear magnetic resonance techniques to manipulate the small deviation from equilibrium of the density matrix of an equilibrium ensemble so that it appears to be the density matrix of a much lower dimensional pure state" This is near the thermodynamic branch where fluctuation-dissipation theorem is valid. What happens here when we go to the Prigogine "dissipative structure" region far from the thermodynamic branch. This is where we expect to find sentient post-quantum self-organization. Note that the quantum gravity models of Hawking -Unruh blackhole-surface radiation also use the fluctuation-dissipation theorem near the thermodynamic branch of event horizons. What is a post-quantum dissipative structure like in this case - a sentient star gate or warp drive device?