78 Roman Jackiw to Robert Fuller, May 5, 1977, in RWJ.
79 Susskind (2008).
80 McCoy, Perk, and Wu (1981), 760.
81 Among them was MIT physicist Jeffrey Goldstone, who argued strenuously in private with Coleman against getting involved with Erhard: Jeffrey Goldstone, personal communication, December 4, 2009.
82 Sidney Coleman to Laurel Sheaf, March 8, 1979, with cc to Steven Adler, Alan Luther, Roman Jackiw, and Werner Erhard; copy in RWJ.
83 Petit (1981), 32. A brief description of the article appeared on the newspaper’s front page that day. My thanks to Charles Petit and Daniel Goldstein for supplying copies of the article.
84 Sidney Coleman, “Press reports of Franklin House conferences,” memorandum dated February 3, 1981, in RWJ.
85 Carroll (1981), 23. Charles Petit, author of the January 1981 article on the “secretive” est-sponsored physics conference, confirmed that he was in regular contact with Jack Sarfatti at the time: Charles Petit, email to the author, December 1, 2009.
86 Sidney Coleman to Steven Adler, Werner Erhard, Roman Jackiw, et al., February 3, 1981, in RWJ. See also Roman Jackiw to Werner Erhard, February 6, 1981; and Doug Bell [“Office of Werner Erhard”] to Roman Jackiw, February 16, 1981, in RWJ.
87 Sidney Coleman to Steven Adler, Werner Erhard, Roman Jackiw, et al., March 23, 1982, in RWJ.
88 Michael Turner to Alan Guth, August 3, 1983, in RWJ. Guth was the organizer for the 1984 meeting. Guth was also the main supervisor of my physics dissertation, and coauthor on more recent work.
89 Michael Turner to So-Young Pi, August 22, 1983, in RWJ. Turner included copies of his letter to Guth of August 3, 1983, when writing to the other invited participants.
90 Roman Jackiw to Werner Erhard, August 16, 1983, in RWJ. On Turner’s position at Fermilab, see Overbye (1991), 206–11.
91 Sidney Coleman to Steven Adler, Werner Erhard, Roman Jackiw et al., November 6, 1985, in RWJ. Ed Witten was listed as a confirmed participant in advance of the first meeting that Coleman and Jackiw organized: see Sidney Coleman and Robert Fuller to Richard Feynman, December 30, 1976, in RPF, folder 25:1.
92 Alan Guth, personal communication, October 3, 2007; Jackiw recalled similar behavior: Jackiw interview (2007).
93 Fenwick (1976), 43 (“zombielike faces”) and 75 (“catatonic stares”).
94 Sidney Coleman memo to Steven Adler, Werner Erhard, Roman Jackiw et al., February 3, 1981, in RWJ.
95 Greenberger (1986), xiii.
96 Roman Jackiw to Werner Erhard, April 5, 1985, in RWJ. See also Erhard’s memo about his impending divorce, March 13, 1983; Erhard to Jackiw, n.d., ca. March 1983; and the other personal correspondence in RWJ. See also the correspondence between Feynman and Erhard in RPF, folder 25:1; Jackiw interview (2007); and Fuller interview (2007).
97 Anderson (1991), B10.
98 Zeman (1991), 8 (“embattled est guru,” “his whereabouts”); Walker (1991), 31 (“pulled up stakes”); Macintyre (1992); cf. Pressman (1993), 263–75.
99 See, e.g., Lattin (1990), A4; Hubner (1990a, b); Richard Rapaport, “Respect,” San Francisco Focus, ca. 1990, clipping in RWJ; and Gelman, Abramson, and Leonard (1991), 72. See also Pressman (1993), 142, 143, 253–58; cf. Self (1992) and Snider (2003).
100 Gonneke Spits to Roman Jackiw and So-Young Pi, January 24, 1991, in RWJ.
101 Roman Jackiw to Werner Erhard, May 29, 1991, in RWJ; correspondence between Jayne Sillari and Jackiw, spring 1991, in RJW; and Jackiw interview (2007).
Chapter 9: From FLASH to Quantum Encryption
1 Herbert (1975), 316.
2 Griffiths (2005), 427.
3 For a concise and accessible description of the various paradoxes, see Herbert (1988), quotation on 4 (“change yesterday today,” attributed to Nic Harvard).
4 Nick Herbert, postcard to John Clauser, February 6, 1975 (“intrinsically almost obscenely non-local”); and Clauser to Herbert, February 11, 1975, both in JFC, folder “Random correspondence.”
5 Elizabeth Rauscher, “List of lectures presented at the Fundamental ‘Fysiks’ Group, LBNL,” in EAR. Entries for September 12, 1975 (Sarfatti) and October 10, 1975 (Herbert).
6 Stapp (1977a), 202. As noted on p. 191, the article was based on lectures originally delivered in Trieste, Italy, in December 1975, though Stapp’s analysis clearly benefited from the Fundamental Fysiks Group as well: he thanked John Clauser, George Weissmann, and other members of the group for “discussions that contributed significantly to the development of this paper” (p. 204).
7 Jack Sarfatti, “Disclosure document describing a ‘faster-than-light quantum communication system,” May 8, 1978, copy in JAW, Sarfatti folders.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid., quotations on 2. See also Sarfatti’s press release, “On fractals and the possibility of faster-than-light quantum communication,” February 2, 1978, copy in JAW, Sarfatti folders.
10 For example, Eberhard spoke about “quantum physics, external reality, and tests of quantum theory” in February and March 1976: Elizabeth Rauscher, “List of lectures presented at the Fundamental ‘Fysiks’ Group, LBNL,” in EAR.
11 Nick Herbert, email to the author, May 3, 2009.
12 Eberhard (1978), 410, 411.
13 Eberhard (1978), esp. 403, 404, 408, and 416.
14 Stated more formally, Eberhard’s proof indicated that the superluminal connections inherent in individual events would always be masked or hidden from view when considering averages over many such events. So much for Sarfatti’s signaling device. His scheme depended on detecting interference patterns at B. But any interference pattern, whether sharp or washed out, would be composed of many individual photons striking the screen, one at a time. Interference patterns, in other words, are a kind of statistical average.
15 Science Citation Index (1961–). Sometimes scientists repeated Eberhard’s argument without citing his paper, perhaps because they had come up with the gist of the argument on their own, e.g. Bartell (1980b), 1358, 1359; and Aspect (1981), 78, 79.
16 Pagels (1982), chaps. 12 and 13, quotation on 174. See also Herbert (1988), 159, 161. On Pagels and Herbert’s relationship, see Pagels (1982), vii; and Nick Herbert, emails to the author, November 28, 2007; December 1, 2007; and February 26, 2008.
17 Eberhard (1978), 410.
18 Jack Sarfatti, “Response to Stapp, 6/26/79,” handwritten notes, June 29, 1979; copy in JAW, Sarfatti folders.
19 Jack Sarfatti, “Research bulletin #5: Seeds of superluminal quantum physics,” unpublished, October 6, 1979; copy in JAW, Sarfatti folders.
20 Lloyd G. Carter, raw feed of untitled UPI article, dated November 28, 1979; copy in JAW, Sarfatti folders. The article ran in several newspapers across the country, including as Carter (1979), 9, and (1980), 44. Nowadays, Sarfatti acknowledges that he probably should have conceded earlier to Stapp on this matter: Sarfatti interview (2009).
21 Jack Sarfatti, “Corporate vision, prepared by i 2 Associates,” January 1979, on 1–3; copy in JAW, Sarfatti folders.
22 Sarfatti, “Corporate vision,” copy in JAW, Sarfatti folders.
23 Sarfatti, “Corporate vision,” copy in JAW, Sarfatti folders.
24 Jack Sarfatti, “The quantum mechanics of superluminal communication,” draft from late June 1979, on 7 (“subsist at the poverty level”); copy in JAW, Sarfatti folders.
25 Central Intelligence Agency, unclassified “memorandum for the record,” December 4, 1979, on 3–5; copy in JAW, Sarfatti folders. Sarfatti underlined the word “subliminal” and added a handwritten note on the copies of the memo that he circulated: “Note amusing synchronicity—misspelling of ‘superluminal’ to ‘subliminal.’”
26 In general other states of polarization are possible as well. In fact, any linear combination of the linear and circular polarization states is possible, leading to the most general state of elliptical polarization.
27 Buchwald (1989), chap. 2. On early attributions of polarization states to individual p
hotons, see Beck (1927); Jordan (1927a); and Ruark and Urey (1927).
28 Nick Herbert, email to the author, July 14, 2009.
29 Beth (1936), 115–17, 125. Reprinted in American Association of Physics Teachers (1963), 27–37.
30 Beth (1936), 115–17.
31 Nick Herbert, email to the author, July 14, 2009.
32 Copies of Nick Herbert’s QUICK preprint are no longer extant. This description comes from two sets of handwritten notes by Jack Sarfatti from June 1979: Sarfatti, “Analysis of Nick Herbert’s design for faster-than-light communicator,” dated June 26, 1979; and Sarfatti, “Response to Stapp, 6/26/79,” dated June 29, 1979, both in JAW, Sarfatti folders. Herbert’s QUICK preprint was also analyzed in detail in Ghirardi and Weber (1979), 599–603; and Ghirardi, Rimini, and Weber (1980), 293–98.
33 Sarfatti, “Analysis of Nick Herbert’s design,” and Sarfatti, “Response to Stapp,” both in JAW, Sarfatti folders.
34 GianCarlo Ghirardi, letter to the author, January 22, 2009.
35 GianCarlo Ghirardi, email to the author, January 23, 2009.
36 Selleri interview with Freire (2003), 6, 41.
37 Ghirardi cited two unpublished papers by Selleri, in addition to Herbert’s QUICK preprint: Selleri, “Einstein locality and the quantum-mechanical long-distance effects,” 1979 preprint based on his presentation at the Udine meeting; and a preprint of Cufaro-Petroni, Garruccio, Selleri, and Vigier (1980), 111–14.
38 Ghirardi and Weber (1979), 602, 603. Ghirardi’s and Weber’s argument relied on the so-called Wigner-Araki-Yanase theorem, a variant or extension of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. The theorem specifies limits to how precisely a given quantity can be measured if a distinct, incompatible quantity (such as total angular momentum) is conserved. See Wigner (1952); Araki and Yanase (1960); and Yanase (1961).
39 Shimony (1984), 225–30. See also GianCarlo Ghirardi, letter to the author, January 22, 2009.
40 Ghirardi, Rimini, and Weber (1980), 298.
41 Herbert, “FLASH—A superluminal communicator based upon a new kind of quantum measurement,” preprint (January 1981); copy in JFC, folder “OLT correspondence.” “OLT” refers to “objective local theories,” Clauser’s term for the type of theory that Bell’s theorem seemed to rule out. See Clauser and Horne (1974).
42 Siegman (1971), 59–64, 183.
43 Herbert, FLASH preprint (January 1981). The same phrase appears in the published version: Herbert (1982), 1177.
44 Actually, the results at station 2 would show some statistical scatter—perhaps twenty-three photons in state R and twenty-seven in state L during one round, rather than always twenty-five in each.
45 Herbert and Karush (1978).
46 Herbert, “FLASH—A superluminal communicator based upon a new kind of quantum measurement,” preprint (January 1981); copy in JFC, folder “OLT correspondence.” See also Nick Herbert, email to the author, February 26, 2008.
47 Herbert, “Esalen sessions on the problem of reality (Feb 2–6, 1981),” on 7; copy in NH.
48 Nick Herbert to Philippe Eberhard, March 15, 1981, in JFC, folder “OLT correspondence.” Eberhard’s original letter is no longer extant. From Herbert’s reply, it appears that Eberhard had asked about unitarity, that is, whether the probabilities for various outcomes in the FLASH device would add up to one.
49 E.g., Sarfatti, unpublished “Jubilee for Zarathustra: A quantum epic that describes itself,” n.d., ca. June 1979; Sarfatti, “Research bulletin #5: Seeds of superluminal quantum physics,” October 6, 1979; and Jack Sarfatti to Nick Herbert, October 28, 1981; copies in JAW, Sarfatti folders.
50 Alwyn van der Merwe (editor, Foundations of Physics) to GianCarlo Ghirardi, March 17, 1981, in GCG.
51 The reviewer was Asher Peres, a French-born physicist who had emigrated to Israel as a young boy and who later studied with Einstein’s collaborator, Nathan Rosen. See Peres (2003), 458. Peres composed a moving, brief autobiography on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, which was published posthumously: Peres (2006). See also Anon. (2006).
52 GianCarlo Ghirardi, letter to the author, January 22, 2009 (“I must confess”); and GianCarlo Ghirardi to Alwyn van der Merwe, April 22, 1981, in GCG.
53 GianCarlo Ghirardi, “Referee’s report on the paper ‘FLASH—A superluminal communicator based upon a new kind of quantum measurement’ by Nick Herbert,” April 22, 1981, in GCG.
54 Ibid. Symbolically, Herbert had assumed that the laser gain tube would create a quantum state with n copies of the original polarization, or R> | nR> = | RRRRRRR…>. The initial state, however, can be rewritten as | R = 2–1/2 [| H> + i | V>], where i is the imaginary number (square root of –1). Any laser tube that functioned as Herbert’s scheme required would also need to transform | H> | nH and | V> | nV. So the action of the tube would actually be | R> 2–1/2 [| nH> + i | nV>], a superposition composed of all H or all V, rather than a state of half H and half V . Herbert seems to have tacitly assumed the transformation would be | R {2–½ [| H<+ i | V<]}n, in which the nonlinearity is made most manifest.
55 Compare the published version of Herbert (1982), 1175, 1176, with the original preprint from January 1981 (copy in JFC, folder “OLT correspondence”), on 6, 7.
56 Nick Herbert to John Bell, March 29, 1982, in NH; copy also in JFC, folder “OLT correspondence.”
57 Tullio Weber to Alwyn van der Merwe, March 8, 1982 (including referee report as enclosure), in GCG.
58 Stapp interview (2007); and Nick Herbert to John Bell, March 29, 1982, in NH.
59 John A. Wheeler to Thomas A. Griffy, April 2, 1980, in JAW, series II, folder “Zurek, Wojciech.”
60 See, e.g., Wojciech H. Zurek to Fritz Rohrlich, November 11, 1982: “I credit John Wheeler for my interest in the fundamental issues raised by quantum theory of measurements”; copy in JAW, series II, folder “Zurek, Wojciech.”
61 Wojciech Zurek to John Wheeler, August 10, 1979, in JAW, series II, folder “Zurek, Wojciech.”
62 Wojciech Zurek, email to the author, September 16, 2007.
63 Wojciech Zurek, email to the author, August 4, 2007. See also correspondence in JAW, series II, folder “Zurek, Wojciech,” regarding Zurek’s and Wootters’s participation in teaching a follow-up graduate seminar. Wheeler taught a version of his seminar while visiting at Columbia University in the early 1980s; see the description in Bernstein (1991b), 93–95.
64 Wootters and Zurek (1979); see also Wojciech Zurek email to the author, August 4, 2007.
65 John A. Wheeler to C. Kennel, February 13, 1985, in JAW, series II, folder “Zurek, Wojciech.” See also Wheeler and Zurek (1983).
66 Wheeler’s archives contain thousands of pages from Sarfatti, spanning the period 1971 through 1988; Herbert and Einhorn also mailed dozens of items to Wheeler during the 1970s and early 1980s. See JAW, Sarfatti, Herbert, and Einhorn folders.
67 Wojciech Zurek, email to the author, March 16, 2009.
68 Larry Bartell, email to the author, April 14, 2009 (“anything that is interesting”); see also Bartell, emails to the author, April 16 and 17, 2009; and Bartell (1980a). On Bartell’s impressive and lengthy career, see Kuczkowski (1999).
69 See, e.g., Larry Bartell to Jack Sarfatti, February 19, 1980; and Larry Bartell to John A. Wheeler, May 22, 1980, both in JAW, Sarfatti folders. See also Bartell, emails to the author, April 14, 16, and 17, 2009; Nick Herbert, email to the author, April 14, 2009; and Jack Sarfatti, email to the author, July 22, 2009.
70 Bartell (1980b), esp. 1358, 1359.
71 Bartell, email to the author, April 14, 2009; see also Nick Herbert, “Fourth Esalen seminar on the nature of reality: Brief impressions,” February 7, 1983, in NH.
72 Bartell (1980a), as reprinted in Wheeler and Zurek (1983), 455, 456.
73 Group member John Clauser, for example, received Nick Herbert’s preprints (copies of which remain in his files) and talked about each iteration with Herbert at the annual Esalen workshops. At the same time, Clauser was in frequ
ent contact with Marlan Scully, an expert in quantum optics then at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Scully, in turn, began to cross paths with Zurek and Wootters at conferences during 1981 and 1982. See JFC, folders “OLT correspondence” and “Random correspondence”; Nick Herbert’s annual reports on the Esalen workshops, 1980–1985, in NH; Marlan O. Scully to John Clauser, September 28, 1981, in JFC, folder “Random correspondence”; and the proceedings of the 1981 NATO summer school, published as Meystre and Scully (1983). On the March 1982 San Antonio meeting at which Zurek, Wootters, and Scully also met, see Zurek, unpublished research notebook, entry for March 17, 1982, in WHZ. On Scully’s work during this period, see also Bromberg (2006).
How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival Page 39
