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Mr. Chip, final round?

Extraordinay situations need extraordinary measures. I hence thought it might be quite appropriate to contact E. Altewischer himself. After all, Leiden is a mere 7 miles away. A short trip to google and I found what I needed. I also asked several physicist collegues from the office: they are still laughing. In short: this story is BS of premium quality, the ingredients are top notch, but they simply don't link. Reminds me of an amateur cook who thinks that using the same ingredients as a five star cook will result in a five star meal.

That story is as leaky as is Geof's CD player. I’ll direct your attention to some of those leaks:


1. “The presence of these particular metals (Nb, Ni, Al, Cu, Zn) and the physical shape of the disc (very thin and flat with bumpy surface) are good indications that it's a quantum dot array.”

Ni and Cu, every metal item which is chromed is in intimate contact with them. Al, well, why does it remind me of Aluminium foil used in the kitchen? Zn, I think Porsche uses that for anti-corrosion treatment of their cars’ bodies. It’s also used in sacrifical anodes for marine structures jackup drilling rigs. Nb, when I do a quick ‘n dirty search in our main database, I find more than 10,000 documents in more than 100 different technical fields, which means a bit all ove the place. Doesn’t look like “good indicators for quantum dots” to me.


2.” Do Bumpy Surfaces Signify Quantum Dot Arrays?”

Of course they do, I don’t have any problems with seeing physical structures of some 100 nanometers thick, do you?


3.” However, if the CD player chassis is viewed as a "leaky box," with many small openings through which the CD laser light can escape…”

Are those many small openings similar to the “periodic array of holes smaller than the wavelength of the photons” of Altewischer’s experiment? What about those CD-drives which use black felt (or silk or whatever) within the “Inner Chamber” to eliminate stray light?
I have to note, however, that Geoff is saying “if the chassis is viewed” and “then we can explain”. Is the leaky CD player wishful thinking or did he actually observe it?

My DVD player is within a wooden cupboard, hence in the dark when the doors are closed. I played a DVD, placed a digicam on top of the player, set exposure time to 1 hour and took a shot. The picture is simply black (and not Simply Red!).

4. Laser light reflecting off room boundaries?

Strange, when I direct a laser pointer towards a wall I see a point on the wall and that’s about it. No reflections, sir! According to the theory the room would, visibly, be filled with multiple laser beams criss-crossing each other. Am I blinded by the light? I rather think that the story, just like the laser beam, has lost some coherence here.


5. Quantum entanglement?

Altewischer uses a 240 mW (hence 240 times (or more?) stronger that that poor CDP quantum well laser) gas laser to to create entangled twin photons in a non-linear barium borate crystal, which photons remain entangled after having tunnelled through the 200 nm holes of a 200 nm gold layer. Without the slightest shade of doubt that experimental setup is similar to Mr. Chip sitting on Geoff's leaky box and waiting for some errant, coherent if you insist, laser photons to pass by whereupon everybody happily dances the entanglement walse, to then go back to the roots and do the quantum superposition magic act, a.k.a EIT.

Even IF the laser beam survived squeezing itself through the gaps and holes in the CD player’s chassis and even IF it further survived the bouncing around in the listening room without losing its coherence, once the laser beam’s photons activate the Q-dots, there’s no more laser beam’s photons to entangle with the photons emitted by the q-dot. Without a partner, you can’t dance no walse!


6. Interaction of light and matter

As fas as EIT is concerned, that’s all very nice, BUT:

“The major poblem lies in the very broad linewidth transitions and/or the large dephasing rates that occur in solids. In EIT we require a coupling laser field strength rivalling the probe transition linewidth. For this to occur in solids we would require laser strengths that would burn a hole through the material.” (quote from David McGloin’s thesis on EIT).

Well, great, Mr.Chip burns holes (quantum black holes ???) into your CDs!! Did anyone notice that? I’m no longer surprised that Wellfed, Clark and John could hear a difference!

Apart from the above, “EIT depends on a very good match between the frequencies of the two atomic transitions to their respective laser frequencies, especially the frequencies separating the states 1 and 2. If matching is not perfect the interference is not ideal, and the medium becomes absorbing. Hence the window of transparency is very narrow.”

Even if EIT in CDs worked (without burning holes that is) I suggest that it would require an extraordinary amount of coincidence to match the CDP’s laser frequency with one of the above frequencies, which frequency is an inherent property of the CD’s polycarbonate material.


Geoff, frankly, the story is more elaborate than the initial one, but still not acceptable. It's ok to convince gullible audiofools, but not more.
When do you admit that the chip is a scam, hoax, fraud, or whatever term is appropriate?


Klaus

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