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First Publications

Karl Hess

Published Oct 22, 2014• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

I was very enthusiastic about our findings and wanted to publish them in a prestigious journal. I knew that this was not going to be easy, because neither Walter nor I were known experts in this particular area of mathematical physics, and any referee who saw that we tried to refute Bell would probably have a negative reaction to it. This is why I called my friend Federico Capasso and asked him to help. I had known Federico since many years. He was one of the top researchers at Bell Laboratories and now professor of applied physics at Harvard. Federico and I had hadmany spirited discussions about research topics and had become very good friends. Federico’s research area is solid state physics. He is a great expert in the area of light detectors, including the photodetectors that are used in the EPRB experiments, and he is the “father” of the quantum cascade laser. He knew about EPRB experiments and the Bell theorem. He also knew that I would not be calling him if I was not convinced about having important results. After presenting my case, I asked Federicowhether hewould, as amember of the National Academy of Sciences, sponsor a paper for PNAS, the proceedings of this National Academy and a very prestigious journal. I was at that time not yet a member of the academy myself. Any member of the academy could communicate annually a small number of papers to PNAS, determine the referees, and be involved in the publication process in the role of a guest editor. If the referee reports were good, such a paper would be printed with very high probability. For academymembers, this was a wonderful way to publish their own research and also to sponsor deserving research of young scientists as well as research on somewhat risky but highly interesting topics.

DOI
10.1201/b16809-9

Related papers

Last Work with Walter

Karl Hess

Before our publication of (Hess and Philipp, 2004), my inaugural paper for the National Academy of Sciences, Walter and I organized a meeting at the Beckman Institute of the University of Illinois to present all of our ideas and to discuss them with the experts. The meeting was a disappointment for me, because not many of the scientists who had criticized us came. Tony was present and discussed his opposing views. I do not remember any other discussions that we had not heard before, and the presentations that Walter and I gaveweremathematically too complex. Our adversaries did not like what we said; only our friends did. Andrei Khrennikov and also Louis Marchildon were present and very supportive.

•Oct 22, 2014•0 citations

Loopholes

David Wick

In 1985, David Mermin, a solid-state physicist at Cornell, wrote a funny and informative account of the EPR argument and Bell’s theorem for Physics Today, the Wall Street Journal of the American physics community. Mermin’s article generated a resurgence of interest in the subject, which swept like a cresting wave through the cocktail-party circuit and just as quickly receded. I recall confused discussions from this period with members of my generation, who alternately declared Bell’s theorem trivial, uninteresting, or the greatest discovery since Einstein proved moving clocks go slowly. One sentiment produced universal agreement, however: Do not write papers or apply for grants in the area, since “philosophical” issues are career killers.

Birkhäuser Boston eBooks•Jan 1, 1995•0 citations

Melvin Lax

R. R. Alfano, H. Z. Cummins, Myriam P. Sarachik +1 more

Melvin Lax, a pioneer in the field of quantum optics, died of cancer on 8 December 2002 at his home in Summit, New Jersey.Born in New York City on 8 March 1922, Lax received his BA in physics from New York University in 1942. He then attended MIT, where he earned two degrees in physics: his SM in 1943 and his PhD in 1947. From 1942 to 1945, he carried out research at the MIT Underwater Sound Laboratory under the direction of Philip M. Morse, Richard H. Bolt, and Herman Feshbach.After receiving his PhD, he took the post of assistant professor of physics at Syracuse University, where he advanced to full professor. In 1955, he joined Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, where he worked as a member of the technical staff. During 1962–64, he headed the theoretical physics research department there. He left Bell Labs in 1971 to join the faculty at City College of New York as a Distinguished Professor of Physics, but continued as consultant to Bell Labs’ solid-state electronics research laboratory.Lax’s contributions underlie many aspects of present-day design of optical communication devices. In 1963, he developed a quantum regression theorem and a quantum theory of non-commuting noise sources. His results permitted the calculation of laser spectral line shapes, general photocount distributions, and similar observables. He had a deep and lifelong interest in random processes. Before his death, he had been completing a monograph entitled Random Processes (Oxford U. Press, in press) and had been writing a text on modern quantum optics. He applied the separation of signal and noise to different condensed matter systems. That approach led him to analyze how impurities that are randomly placed in a semiconductor medium or that have randomly varying interaction strength affect the energy levels and hence the medium’s conduction properties. The approach also formed the basis for the so-called coherent potential approximation. Late in life, Lax studied the scattering and transmission of laser light through turbid media such as human tissue. He aimed to devise noninvasive optical diagnostic tools for breast cancer without the drawbacks associated with x-ray use.In 1962, Lax developed a technique to obtain symmetry-related selection rules, including time-reversal, that govern the “go/no-go” alternatives for physical processes—for example, scattering or optical transitions—in crystalline solids. In 1971, with Donald Nelson, he considered the structure of the photoelastic tensor response of a crystal—a problem that had been dormant for more than 80 years—and found that a new physical effect, the antisymmetric microscopic rotations of the atomic constituents, had to be included to explain the experiments. Scientists going back to Friedrich Pockels (in 1893), a founder of the study of optical properties of matter under external fields, had assumed that those effects vanished. As was typical of Lax’s approach, the papers Lax and Nelson subsequently produced were detailed and comprehensive, covering the range from microscopic atomistic force models to macroscopic measurable consequences.The interplay between electronic and vibrational degrees of freedom was a theme that, like random processes, bridged Lax’s earliest work with work he did late in his career. Of particular interest was how that interplay determines the absorption and emission of light and the electrical resistivity of material systems. In his early (1952) papers on the Franck-Condon energy in bulk crystals, he meticulously analyzed the subtle electron-phonon effects. Forty years later, with Wei Cai, he invoked those effects to explain how out-of-equilibrium “hot” electrons and “hot” phonons can interact to give negative carrier mobilities in quantum well, or heterostructure, systems. This was a counterintuitive result.Lax served the physics community in many roles. As a member of the American Physical Society’s publications committee from 1980 to 1982, he was instrumental in helping to create a system for electronic submission and processing of manuscripts. He was ahead of his time in recognizing that he should master computers so he could carry out theoretical physics research. He became so expert in computers that one of his early papers on evaluating Fourier integrals was published in Mathematics of Computation in 1982. He also was on the board of editors of the Physical Review, Quantum Optics , and the International Journal of Modern Physics.In the university setting, Lax had a lasting effect: His students will remember him with admiration, respect, and gratitude. He prepared his lectures with exceptional care; for his advanced courses, he frequently prepared extensive and detailed notes that he himself photocopied and distributed. He gave his time generously to students, colleagues, and others with whom he freely and graciously shared his ideas and insights. He served the City College of New York system on the University Committee on Research, for which he was the university physics liaison.Beyond the campus, Lax served from the mid-1980s as a member of the National Academy of Sciences’ basic research advisory committee, which evaluated research proposals. He provided scientific services also to the Naval Research Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, the US Army Research Office, and the Department of Energy.In 1999, the Optical Society of America awarded Lax the Willis Lamb Medal for his work in quantum optics. Lax was an irreplaceable member of the CCNY physics department. An eminent physicist with an international reputation, he was also an exceptionally kind and gentle human being and a caring friend. His colleagues share a profound sense of the loss of a unique scientist and are grateful to have had the opportunity to work with him. Melvin Lax PPT|High resolution© 2003 American Institute of Physics.

Physics Today•May 1, 2003•0 citations

New Friends, New Inequalities

Karl Hess

Armed with this more detailed understanding of the basic probabil- ity concepts and their relation to EPRB experiments and Bell’s work, I was ready to attend the conferences for which we had received invitations. The letters of invitation were also very reassuring and showed that there was quite a big community that had significant issues with Bell’s work.

•Oct 22, 2014•0 citations

International Conference on Quantum Science and Applications (ICQSA-2016)

Abdullah Algin, Md Sadik Hassan Arik, Alexandre M. Gavrilik

This special volume of Journal of Physics: Conference Series is dedicated to the proceedings of "International Conference on Quantum Science and Applications (ICQSA-2016)". The conference was organized by the Centre for Quantum Research and Applications at Eskisehir Osmangazi University, Eskisehir, Turkey. It was held in Eskisehir Osmangazi University Congress and Culture Centre during May 25-27, 2016 http://icqsa2016.ogu.edu.tr . It gathered actively 143 participants from different disciplines in natural and applied sciences coming from 16 different countries from all over the word. It was the first international conference in its content on the scientific research fields of quantum science and applications in Turkey. It also consisted of 12 plenary lectures and 119 contributed oral presentations covering interdisciplinary fields of research. The ICQSA-2016 conference focused on recent modern theoretical and experimental developments of quantum science in multi-disciplinary aspects of areas of mathematics, physics, statistics, chemistry, biology, computer science, electronics, informatics, medicine, education, etc. It served as an interaction platform for students, researchers, public, and private sector delegates for sharing new scientific and technological ideas on quantum applications in science and technology. The topics of the conference were: Quantum theory and quantum computing, quantum information theory and its applications, quantum statistics and its applications, quantum thermodynamics, quantum cryptography, classical and quantum symmetries, quantum calculus in science, engineering, medicine, education, etc., classical and quantum integrable systems, modeling and numerical methods in quantum systems, other modern mathematical methods in science and technology. Each of the submitted papers for this special volume of the proceedings of ICQSA-2016 has been reviewed by external referees. There are 36 accepted papers. Besides, it is worth pointing out that a great deal of interest shown by the participants of the ICQSA-2016 conference gives hope for the continuation of this meeting in the following years. The conference organization was sponsored by Eskisehir Osmangazi University (ESOGU), Eskisehir Tepebasi Municipality, the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) under the project number 113F226. Other supporters of this organization were: Eskisehir Metropolitan Municipality, Eskisehir Governorship Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism, Pegem Academy Publishing Company. In addition, this special volume is supported by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) under the project number 113F226. Finally, our special thanks go to the Scientific and Organizing Committee members, to the sponsors and supporters, and to all of the participants. We hope this special volume will provide a useful resource for students, experts, and other participants, who are interested in interdisciplinary fields of quantum science and applications.

Journal of Physics Conference Series•Oct 1, 2016•0 citations

The Devil is in the Detail

Karl Hess

When I took a first glance at Bell’s paper, I got the impression that all of Bell’s statements were mathematically straightforward and simply true for numbers and, therefore, a mathematically proven truth, a theorem for numbers, just as Tony’s equation was. Both Walter and I could not see why this theorem could be applied to the actual experiments. I realized that it would be a lot of work to understand the physical significance of Bell’s ideas, and I first had to convincemyself that it was reallyworthwhile.What I askedmyself was whether Bell’s ideas had any consequences for engineering and technology and not just for the esoteric questions related to the battle between Einstein and Bohr. While I still was fond of my childhood dream to make a contribution in mathematical physics, I had worked too long in areas of applied physics and engineering to attack a problem that had no applications in the foreseeable future.

•Oct 22, 2014•0 citations
I was very enthusiastic about our findings and wanted to publish them in a prestigious journal. I knew that this was not going to be easy, because neither Walter nor I were known experts in this particular area of mathematical physics, and any referee who saw that we tried to refute Bell would probably have a negative reaction to it. This is why I called my friend Federico Capasso and asked him to help. I had known Federico since many years. He was one of the top researchers at Bell Laboratories and now professor of applied physics at Harvard. Federico and I had hadmany spirited discussions about research topics and had become very good friends. Federico’s research area is solid state physics. He is a great expert in the area of light detectors, including the photodetectors that are used in the EPRB experiments, and he is the “father” of the quantum cascade laser. He knew about EPRB experiments and the Bell theorem. He also knew that I would not be calling him if I was not convinced about having important results. After presenting my case, I asked Federicowhether hewould, as amember of the National Academy of Sciences, sponsor a paper for PNAS, the proceedings of this National Academy and a very prestigious journal. I was at that time not yet a member of the academy myself. Any member of the academy could communicate annually a small number of papers to PNAS, determine the referees, and be involved in the publication process in the role of a guest editor. If the referee reports were good, such a paper would be printed with very high probability. For academymembers, this was a wonderful way to publish their own research and also to sponsor deserving research of young scientists as well as research on somewhat risky but highly interesting topics.
Before our publication of (Hess and Philipp, 2004), my inaugural paper for the National Academy of Sciences, Walter and I organized a meeting at the Beckman Institute of the University of Illinois to present all of our ideas and to discuss them with the experts. The meeting was a disappointment for me, because not many of the scientists who had criticized us came. Tony was present and discussed his opposing views. I do not remember any other discussions that we had not heard before, and the presentations that Walter and I gaveweremathematically too complex. Our adversaries did not like what we said; only our friends did. Andrei Khrennikov and also Louis Marchildon were present and very supportive.
In 1985, David Mermin, a solid-state physicist at Cornell, wrote a funny and informative account of the EPR argument and Bell’s theorem for Physics Today, the Wall Street Journal of the American physics community. Mermin’s article generated a resurgence of interest in the subject, which swept like a cresting wave through the cocktail-party circuit and just as quickly receded. I recall confused discussions from this period with members of my generation, who alternately declared Bell’s theorem trivial, uninteresting, or the greatest discovery since Einstein proved moving clocks go slowly. One sentiment produced universal agreement, however: Do not write papers or apply for grants in the area, since “philosophical” issues are career killers.
Melvin Lax, a pioneer in the field of quantum optics, died of cancer on 8 December 2002 at his home in Summit, New Jersey.Born in New York City on 8 March 1922, Lax received his BA in physics from New York University in 1942. He then attended MIT, where he earned two degrees in physics: his SM in 1943 and his PhD in 1947. From 1942 to 1945, he carried out research at the MIT Underwater Sound Laboratory under the direction of Philip M. Morse, Richard H. Bolt, and Herman Feshbach.After receiving his PhD, he took the post of assistant professor of physics at Syracuse University, where he advanced to full professor. In 1955, he joined Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, where he worked as a member of the technical staff. During 1962–64, he headed the theoretical physics research department there. He left Bell Labs in 1971 to join the faculty at City College of New York as a Distinguished Professor of Physics, but continued as consultant to Bell Labs’ solid-state electronics research laboratory.Lax’s contributions underlie many aspects of present-day design of optical communication devices. In 1963, he developed a quantum regression theorem and a quantum theory of non-commuting noise sources. His results permitted the calculation of laser spectral line shapes, general photocount distributions, and similar observables. He had a deep and lifelong interest in random processes. Before his death, he had been completing a monograph entitled Random Processes (Oxford U. Press, in press) and had been writing a text on modern quantum optics. He applied the separation of signal and noise to different condensed matter systems. That approach led him to analyze how impurities that are randomly placed in a semiconductor medium or that have randomly varying interaction strength affect the energy levels and hence the medium’s conduction properties. The approach also formed the basis for the so-called coherent potential approximation. Late in life, Lax studied the scattering and transmission of laser light through turbid media such as human tissue. He aimed to devise noninvasive optical diagnostic tools for breast cancer without the drawbacks associated with x-ray use.In 1962, Lax developed a technique to obtain symmetry-related selection rules, including time-reversal, that govern the “go/no-go” alternatives for physical processes—for example, scattering or optical transitions—in crystalline solids. In 1971, with Donald Nelson, he considered the structure of the photoelastic tensor response of a crystal—a problem that had been dormant for more than 80 years—and found that a new physical effect, the antisymmetric microscopic rotations of the atomic constituents, had to be included to explain the experiments. Scientists going back to Friedrich Pockels (in 1893), a founder of the study of optical properties of matter under external fields, had assumed that those effects vanished. As was typical of Lax’s approach, the papers Lax and Nelson subsequently produced were detailed and comprehensive, covering the range from microscopic atomistic force models to macroscopic measurable consequences.The interplay between electronic and vibrational degrees of freedom was a theme that, like random processes, bridged Lax’s earliest work with work he did late in his career. Of particular interest was how that interplay determines the absorption and emission of light and the electrical resistivity of material systems. In his early (1952) papers on the Franck-Condon energy in bulk crystals, he meticulously analyzed the subtle electron-phonon effects. Forty years later, with Wei Cai, he invoked those effects to explain how out-of-equilibrium “hot” electrons and “hot” phonons can interact to give negative carrier mobilities in quantum well, or heterostructure, systems. This was a counterintuitive result.Lax served the physics community in many roles. As a member of the American Physical Society’s publications committee from 1980 to 1982, he was instrumental in helping to create a system for electronic submission and processing of manuscripts. He was ahead of his time in recognizing that he should master computers so he could carry out theoretical physics research. He became so expert in computers that one of his early papers on evaluating Fourier integrals was published in Mathematics of Computation in 1982. He also was on the board of editors of the Physical Review, Quantum Optics , and the International Journal of Modern Physics.In the university setting, Lax had a lasting effect: His students will remember him with admiration, respect, and gratitude. He prepared his lectures with exceptional care; for his advanced courses, he frequently prepared extensive and detailed notes that he himself photocopied and distributed. He gave his time generously to students, colleagues, and others with whom he freely and graciously shared his ideas and insights. He served the City College of New York system on the University Committee on Research, for which he was the university physics liaison.Beyond the campus, Lax served from the mid-1980s as a member of the National Academy of Sciences’ basic research advisory committee, which evaluated research proposals. He provided scientific services also to the Naval Research Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, the US Army Research Office, and the Department of Energy.In 1999, the Optical Society of America awarded Lax the Willis Lamb Medal for his work in quantum optics. Lax was an irreplaceable member of the CCNY physics department. An eminent physicist with an international reputation, he was also an exceptionally kind and gentle human being and a caring friend. His colleagues share a profound sense of the loss of a unique scientist and are grateful to have had the opportunity to work with him. Melvin Lax PPT|High resolution© 2003 American Institute of Physics.
This special volume of Journal of Physics: Conference Series is dedicated to the proceedings of "International Conference on Quantum Science and Applications (ICQSA-2016)". The conference was organized by the Centre for Quantum Research and Applications at Eskisehir Osmangazi University, Eskisehir, Turkey. It was held in Eskisehir Osmangazi University Congress and Culture Centre during May 25-27, 2016 http://icqsa2016.ogu.edu.tr . It gathered actively 143 participants from different disciplines in natural and applied sciences coming from 16 different countries from all over the word. It was the first international conference in its content on the scientific research fields of quantum science and applications in Turkey. It also consisted of 12 plenary lectures and 119 contributed oral presentations covering interdisciplinary fields of research. The ICQSA-2016 conference focused on recent modern theoretical and experimental developments of quantum science in multi-disciplinary aspects of areas of mathematics, physics, statistics, chemistry, biology, computer science, electronics, informatics, medicine, education, etc. It served as an interaction platform for students, researchers, public, and private sector delegates for sharing new scientific and technological ideas on quantum applications in science and technology. The topics of the conference were: Quantum theory and quantum computing, quantum information theory and its applications, quantum statistics and its applications, quantum thermodynamics, quantum cryptography, classical and quantum symmetries, quantum calculus in science, engineering, medicine, education, etc., classical and quantum integrable systems, modeling and numerical methods in quantum systems, other modern mathematical methods in science and technology. Each of the submitted papers for this special volume of the proceedings of ICQSA-2016 has been reviewed by external referees. There are 36 accepted papers. Besides, it is worth pointing out that a great deal of interest shown by the participants of the ICQSA-2016 conference gives hope for the continuation of this meeting in the following years. The conference organization was sponsored by Eskisehir Osmangazi University (ESOGU), Eskisehir Tepebasi Municipality, the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) under the project number 113F226. Other supporters of this organization were: Eskisehir Metropolitan Municipality, Eskisehir Governorship Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism, Pegem Academy Publishing Company. In addition, this special volume is supported by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) under the project number 113F226. Finally, our special thanks go to the Scientific and Organizing Committee members, to the sponsors and supporters, and to all of the participants. We hope this special volume will provide a useful resource for students, experts, and other participants, who are interested in interdisciplinary fields of quantum science and applications.
When I took a first glance at Bell’s paper, I got the impression that all of Bell’s statements were mathematically straightforward and simply true for numbers and, therefore, a mathematically proven truth, a theorem for numbers, just as Tony’s equation was. Both Walter and I could not see why this theorem could be applied to the actual experiments. I realized that it would be a lot of work to understand the physical significance of Bell’s ideas, and I first had to convincemyself that it was reallyworthwhile.What I askedmyself was whether Bell’s ideas had any consequences for engineering and technology and not just for the esoteric questions related to the battle between Einstein and Bohr. While I still was fond of my childhood dream to make a contribution in mathematical physics, I had worked too long in areas of applied physics and engineering to attack a problem that had no applications in the foreseeable future.