Device physics vis-à-vis fundamental physics in Cold War America: The case of quantum optics

ISIS

Volumn 97, Issue 2, 2006, Pages 237-259

  Bromberg, Joan Lisa ^a  

^a JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ART; ARTICLE; EQUIPMENT DESIGN; HISTORY; HUMAN; PHYSICS; PUBLIC FIGURE; QUANTUM THEORY; UNITED STATES; WAR;

EQUIPMENT DESIGN; FAMOUS PERSONS; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HUMANS; PHYSICS; PORTRAITS; QUANTUM THEORY; UNITED STATES; WAR;

EID: 33746268362     PISSN: 00211753     EISSN: 15456994     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/504733     Document Type: Article

References (124)

1. See, e.g., Paul Forman, "Behind Quantum Electronics: National Security as Basis for Physical Research in the United States, 1940-1960," Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences, 1987, 18:149-229;
2. Forman, "Into Quantum Electronics: The Maser as 'Gadget' of Cold-War America," in National Military Establishments and the Advancement of Science and Technology, ed. Forman and José M. Sánchez-Ron (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 180) (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1996), pp. 261-326;
3. David Hounshell, "The Cold War, RAND, and the Generation of Knowledge," Hist. Stud. Phys. Biol. Sci., 1997, 27:237-267;
4. David Kaiser, "Cold War Requisitions, Scientific Manpower, and the Production of American Physicists after World War II," ibid., 2002, 33:131-159;
5. Daniel J. Kevles, "Cold War and Hot Physics: Science, Security, and the American State, 1945-1956," ibid, 1990, 20:239-264;
6. Stuart W. Leslie, The Cold War and American Science (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1993);
7. Everett Mendelsohn, Merritt Roe Smith, and Peter Weingart, "Science and the Military: Setting the Problem," in Science, Technology, and the Military, ed. Mendelsohn, Smith, and Weingart (Dordrecht Kluwer, 1988), pp. xi-xxix;
8. and Silvan S. Schweber, 'The Mutual Embrace of Science and the Military: ONR and the Growth of Physics in the United States after World War II," ibid, pp. 3-45.
9. See, e.g., Forman, "Behind Quantum Electronics";
10. Forman, "Into Quantum Electronics";
11. Kaiser, "Cold War Requisitions, Scientific Manpower, and the Production of American Physicists";
12. Leslie, Cold War and American Science;
13. and Ian Hacking, "Weapons Research and the Form of Scientific Knowledge," in Nuclear Weapons, Deterrence, and Disarmament, ed. David Copp (Calgary, Alberta: Univ. Calgary Press, 1986), pp. 237-260.
14. But see the counterarguments in Kevles, "Cold War and Hot Physics";
15. and Roger L. Geiger, rev. of Leslie, Cold War and American Science, Technology and Culture, 1994, 35:629-631.
16. Forman, "Behind Quantum Electronics," p. 216;
17. see also, e.g., Schweber, "Mutual Embrace of Science and the Military" (cit. n. 1), p. 10.
18. Quantum optics was largely inspired by the inventions of the laser and the intensity interferometer, in the early 1960s and mid 1950s, respectively.
19. Joan Lisa Bromberg, interview with M. O. Scully, 15 and 16 July 2004, on deposit at the Center for History of Physics, American Institute of Physics, College Park, Maryland.
20. ibid;
21. and Joan Lisa Bromberg, interview with W. E. Lamb, Jr., 7 Mar. 1985, on deposit at the Center for History of Physics.
22. Joan Lisa Bromberg, The Laser in America, 1950-1970 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991).
23. R. J. Glauber, "Optical Coherence and Photon Statistics," in Quantum Optics and Electronics: Lectures Delivered at Les Houches during the 1964 Session of the Summer School of Theoretical Physics, University of Grenoble, ed. C. DeWitt, A. Blandin, and C. Cohen-Tannoudji (New York: Gordon & Breach, 1965), p. 66.
24. Roy J. Glauber, "Photon Correlations," Physical Review Letters, 1 Feb. 1963, 10(3):84-86, on p. 85.
25. Glauber, "Optical Coherence and Photon Statistics" (Cit. n. 8), pp. 162-163.
26. Bromberg interview with Scully (cit. n. 5).
27. Here h is Planck's constant. The energy of this single-frequency field can take the values 1/2hf, 3/22hf,... (j + 1/2)hf etc., where j represents the number of photons. For the purposes of this model, photons thus have the meaning that they represent the level of excitation of the field. M. O. Scully, W. E. Lamb, Jr., and M. J. Stephen, "Quantum Theory of an Optical Maser," in Physics of Quantum Electronics: Proceedings of the International Conference, Puerto Rico, July 1965, ed. P. L. Kelley, B. Lax, and P. E. Tannenwald (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), pp. 759-768, on p. 760.
28. Lamb had used this model for a semiclassical theory of the maser in 1964; see W. E. Lamb, Jr., "Theory of an Optical Maser," Physical Review, 15 June 1964, 134(6A):A1429-A1450.
29. Willis E. Lamb, Jr., and Marlan O. Scully, "Quantum Theory of an Optical Maser, I: General Theory," Phys. Rev., 10 June 1967, 159(2):208-226; see p. 209. Among other authors who constructed quantum theories of the laser in these years, using different models and formalisms, are Melvin Lax, William H. Louisell, and a group in Stuttgart, Germany, that included H. Lax and H. Risken.
30. Ibid., pp. 221-222;
31. and Willis E. Lamb, Jr., "Quantum Theory of Measurement," in New Techniques and Ideas in Quantum Measurement Theory, ed. D. M. Greenberger (Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 480) (New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1986), pp. 407-416, on p. 408.
32. Silvan S. Schweber writes of Oppenheimer's interest in the measurement problem in "The Empiricist Temper Regnant: Theoretical Physics in the United States, 1920-1940," Hist. Stud. Phys. Biol. Sci., 1986, 17:55-98, on pp. 84-91.
33. W. E. Lamb, Jr., "An Operational Interpretation of Nonrelativistic Quantum Mechanics," Physics Today, Apr. 1969, 22(4):23-28, on p. 28.
34. Michael D. Crisp and Edwin T. Jaynes, "Radiative Effects in Semiclassical Theory," Phys. Rev., 25 Mar. 1969, 179(5):1253-1261, on pp. 1253, 1254.
35. Edwin Thompson Jaynes (1922-1998) is best known for his work on probability and statistical mechanics. See the obituary by John W. Clark, Richard E. Norberg, and G. Larry Bretthorst in Phys. Today, Jan. 2000, 53(1):71-72.
36. Crisp and Jaynes, "Radiative Effects in Semiclassical Theory," p. 1254. Although this paper is coauthored with a graduate student, I have presumed that these introductory comments are Jaynes's.
37. See the more extended discussion in Section III.
38. E. T. Jaynes, rev. of Louis de Broglie, New Perspectives in Physics, American Journal of Physics, 1963, 31:225-227, on p. 226;
39. and Jaynes, "Survey of the Present Status of Neoclassical Radiation Theory," in Coherence and Quantum Optics: Proceedings of the 1972 Rochester Meeting on Coherence and Quantum Optics, ed. Leonard Mandel and Emil Wolf (New York: Plenum, 1973), pp. 35-81, quotations from pp. 48-50.
40. E. T. Jaynes and F. W. Cummings, "Comparison of Quantum and Semiclassical Radiation Theory with Application to the Beam Maser," Proceedings of the IEEE, Jan. 1963, 51:89-109. on pp. 101-102.
41. Crisp and Jaynes, "Radiative Effects in Semiclassical Theory" (cit. n. 17);
42. and C. R. Stroud, Jr., and E. T. Jaynes, "Long-Term Solutions in Semiclassical Radiation Theory," Phys. Rev. A, Jan. 1970, 1(1):106-121.
43. Also pertinent are E. T. Jaynes to Emil Wolf, 30 Oct 1968;
44. and Jaynes to Carlos R. Stroud, Jr., 27 Jan. 1969, 24 Dec. 1969, Office files of C. R. Stroud, Jr. I thank Stroud for making these letters available to me.
45. Lamb ultimately decided in favor of Franken. For information on the Rochester conferences and on the bet see Emil Wolf, "Early Days of Coherence Theory and the First Rochester Conference on Coherence," in A Jewel in the Crown: Essays in Honor of the Seventy-fifth Anniversary of the Institute of Optics, ed. Carlos R. Stroud, Jr. (Rochester, N.Y.: Univ. Rochester Press, 2004), pp. 157-164;
46. Stroud, "The Jaynes-Franken Bet," ibid., pp. 165-167;
47. and Bromberg, Laser in America (cit. n. 7), pp. 106-108.
48. See also "Post Mortem on the Bet," in E. T. Jaynes, "Electrodynamics Today," in Coherence and Quantum Optics IV: Proceedings of the Fourth Rochester Conference, June 1977, ed. Leonard Mandel and Wolf (New York: Plenum. 1978), pp. 507-509.
49. A. B. Meinel, J. A. Eyer, R. H. Noble, and P. N. Slater, "The Optical Sciences Center: Its History, Organization, and Relation to Government and Industry," Applied Optics, Feb. 1971. 10(2):243-247. I am grateful to W. Patrick McCray for this and other materials on the center.
50. Bromberg interview with Scully (cit. n. 5).
51. Marlan O. Scully and Murray Sargent III, "The Concept of the Photon" Phys. Today, Mar. 1972, 25:39-47;
52. and Sargent, Scully, and Willis E. Lamb, Jr., Laser Physics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1974).
53. Scully and Sargent, "Concept of the Photon," pp. 42-43.
54. Jaynes, "Survey of the Present Status of Neoclassical Radiation Theory" (Cit. n. 20), p. 37.
55. Ibid., p. 72;
56. and E. T. Jaynes, "A Backward Look to the Future," in Physics and Probability: Essays in Honor of Edwin T. Jaynes, ed. W. T. Grandy, Jr., and Peter W. Milonni (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993), pp. 261-275, on p. 269.
57. Bromberg interview with Scully (cit. n. 5).
58. Weng W. Chow, Marlan O. Scully, and John O. Stoner, Jr., "Quantum-Beat Phenomena Described by Quantum Electrodynamics and Neoclassical Theory," Phys. Rev. A. Apr. 1975, 11(4):1380-1388.
59. Scully and his collaborators were not the only ones looking at beats as a way of testing NCT vs. QED. See I. R. Senitzky, "Quantum Beats and Quantum Mechanics," Phys. Rev. Lett., 29 Dec. 1975, 35(26):1755-1758;
60. and R. M. Herman et al., "Quantum Electrodynamics and Semiclassical Interference Effects in Spontaneous Radiation," Phys. Rev. A, Apr. 1975, 11(4):1389-1396.
61. Chow et al., "Quantum-Beat Phenomena Described by Quantum Electrodynamics and Neoclassical Theory," p. 1382. See the discussion of interference fringes below. Beats are a temporal analogue to spatial interference patterns. Knowledge of "which frequency" is emitted is analogous to knowledge of "which path" is taken in interference.
62. E. T. Jaynes, "Quantum Beats," in Foundations of Radiation Theory and Quantum Electrodynamics, ed. Asim O. Barut (New York: Plenum. 1980), pp. 37-43, on p. 41.
63. Ibid., p. 42.
64. This was known as the "Jaynes-Cummings" QED model. As of mid 2005, the Web of Science records 1,650 citations to the Jaynes-Cummings article, compared to 139 for Crisp-Jaynes and 101 for Stroud-Jaynes (see the articles cited in notes 17 and 22, above). For a survey of work done to test Jaynes's NCT through the mid 1970s see Leonard Mandel, "The Case for and against Semiclassical Radiation Theory," in Progress in Optics XIII, ed. Emil Wolf (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1976), pp. 27-68.
65. Marlan O. Scully, "How to Make Quantum Mechanics Look Like a Hidden-Variable Theory and Vice Versa," Phys. Rev. D, 15 Nov. 1983, 28(10):2477-2484, on p. 2477.
66. His analysis of Jaynes's error is in Scully and Kai Druehl, "Quantum Eraser A Proposed Photon Correlation Experiment Concerning Observation and 'Delayed Choice' in Quantum Mechanics," Phys. Rev. A, Apr. 1982, 25(4):2208-2213.
67. See also Scully and M. Suhail Zubairy, Quantum Optics (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1997), pp. 568-573.
68. Scully discusses the stimulation Jaynes's ideas afforded him in Bromberg interview with Scully (cit. n. 5), pp. 21, 42.
69. Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen, "Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?" Phys. Rev., 15 May 1935, 47:777-780;
70. and Marlan O. Scully, Richard Shea, and John D. McCullen, "State Reduction in Quantum Mechanics: A Calculational Example," Physics Reports, 1978, 43(13):485-498, on p. 487, rpt in Willis E. Lamb, Jr: A Festschrift on the Occasion of His Sixty-fifth Birthday, ed. Dik ter Haar and Scully (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1978), pp. 485-498. Most of the authors' analysis is actually conducted in terms of the density matrix, a mathematical entity defined in terms of the state vector.
71. For Niels Bohr's views on disturbance as the cause of reduction see Mara Beller, "The Rhetoric of Antirealism and the Copenhagen Spirit," Philosophy of Science, 1996, 63:183-204;
72. and Jeffrey Bub, Interpreting the Quantum World (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1997), pp. 198 ff.
73. Scully et al., "State Reduction in Quantum Mechanics" (cit. n. 37), p. 487.
74. They use a pair of idealized Stem-Gerlach apparatuses.
75. Scufly et al., "State Reduction in Quantum Mechanics" (cit. n. 37), p. 494.
76. ibid, p. 495.
77. Marlan O. Scully and Cyrus D. Cantrell, "The EPR Paradox Revisited," Phys. Rep., 1978, 43(13):499-508, rpt. in Willis E. Lamb, Jr: A Festschrift, ed. ter Haar and Scully (cit. n. 37), pp. 499-508.
78. Scully and Cantrell, "EPR Paradox Revisited," pp. 501, 505, 501.
79. For philosophical arguments about the EPR paper and "physical reality" see Jan Faye and Henry J. Folse, eds., Niels Bahr and Contemporary Philosophy (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 153) (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994).
80. Arthur Fine discusses the EPR paper and the problem of inconsistent wave-function representations of systems in relation to Einstein's thought in two essays published in 1981 and 1984 and reprinted as Chapters 3 and 4 of The Shaky Game: Einstein, Realism, and the Quantum Theory, 2nd ed. (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1996).
81. Scully and Druehl, "Quantum Eraser" (cit. n. 36) (see acknowledgment on p. 2212);
82. and Mark Hillery and Marlan O. Scully, "On State Reduction and Observation in Quantum Optics: Wigner's Friends and Their Amnesia," in Quantum Optics, Experimental Gravity, and Measurement Theory, ed. Pierre Meystre and Scully (New York: Plenum, 1983), pp. 65-85.
83. These additional variables are "hidden" in the sense that they are not contained in the formalism of ordinary quantum mechanics. Bell's mid-1960s papers are reprinted in J. S. Bell, Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1987).
84. John F. Clauser and Abner Shimony, "Bell's Theorem: Experimental Tests and Implications," Reports on Progress in Physics, 1978, 41:1881-1927 (note that Clauser and Shimony held it highly probable that the experiments supporting hidden-variable theories were vitiated by systematic errors [p. 1919]);
85. and M. O. Scully, "A Proposed Two Photon Correlation Experiment as a Test of Hidden Variable Theories," in Laser Spectroscopy V. ed. A. R. W. McKeller, T. Oka, and B. P. Stoicheff (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1981), pp. 41-44.
86. Alain Aspect, Philippe Grangier, and Gerard Roger, "Experimental Tests of Realistic Local Theories via Bell's Theorem," Phys. Rev. Lett., 17 Aug. 1981, 47(7):460-463;
87. Aspect, Jean Dalibard, and Roger, "Experimental Test of Bell's Inequalities Using Time-Varying Analyzers," ibid., 20 Dec. 1982, 49(25):1804-1807;
88. and Marian O. Scully and Leno M. Pedrotti, "Bell's Theorem and Quasiclassical Quantum Distribution Theory: A Calculational Example," in Quantum Electrodynamics and Quantum Optics, ed. Asim O. Barut (New York: Plenum, 1984), pp. 459-467, on pp. 459, 467.
89. For testimony with regard to discussions see ibid.;
90. and Pierre Meystre, "Is Reality Really Real? An Introduction to Bell's Inequalities," ibid., pp. 443-458.
91. Scully, "How to Make Quantum Mechanics Look Like a Hidden-Variable Theory and Vice Versa" (cit. n. 36).
92. The other important group developing this apparatus was Serge Haroche and his colleagues at the University of Paris IV and the Ecole Normale Supérieure.
93. The Rydberg atoms are so called because the outer electron circles so far from the rest of the atom that the whole atom behaves rather like hydrogen. Johannes Robert Rydberg, a Swedish spectroscopist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, developed an important empirical formula for spectral lines, including the lines of hydrogen.
94. D. Meschede, H. Walther, and G. Mueller, "One-Atom Maser," Phys. Rev. Leu., 11 Feb. 1985, 54(6):551-554.
95. "Marian O. Scully, Berthold-Georg Englert, and Herbert Walther, "Quantum Optical Tests of Complementarity," Nature, 9 May 1991, 351:111-116.
96. See also Scully and Walther, "Quantum Optical Tests of Observation and Complementarity in Quantum Mechanics," Phys. Rev. A, 15 May 1989, 39(10):5229-5236;
97. and Englert, Walther, and Scully, "Quantum Optical Ramsey Fringes and Complementarity," Applied Physics B, 1992, 54:366-368.
98. The experimenter's choice is constrained, of course, by the limits imposed by the lifetime of the photon in the cavity. The geometry they envision is one in which the photodetector forms a common wall for the two cavities. There is a shutter in each cavity, and it is placed directly over the photodetector wall.
99. Scully et al., "Quantum Optical Tests of Complementarity" (cit. n. 53), p. 111.
100. See also Berthold-Georg Englert, Marlan O. Scully, and Herbert Walther, "The Duality in Matter and Light," Scientific American, Dec. 1994, 271:86-92.
101. In such a way, e.g., Marcello Cini sees an influence of the disciplinary and sociopolitical environment on the mid-1950s switch from formalisms based on the Hamiltonians and Schrödinger's equation to formalisms based on dispersion relations in particle physics. See Marcello Cini, "The History and Ideology of Dispersion Relations: The Pattern of Internal and External Factors in a Paradigmatic Shift," Fundamenta Scientiae, 1980, 1:157-172.
102. Marian O. Scully, Virgil Sanders, and Murray Sargent III, "Novel Multioscillator Approach to the Problem of Locking in Two-Mode Ring-Laser Gyros," Optics Letters, Aug. 1978, 3(2):43-45;
103. Dana Z. Anderson, Weng W. Chow, Sanders. and Scully, "Novel Multioscillator Approach to the Problem of Locking in Two-Mode Ring-Laser Gyros: Part II," Appl. Opt., 1 Apr. 1979, 18(7):9-10;
104. Anderson, Chow, Scully, and Sanders, "Optically Biased Laser Gyro," Opt. Lett, Oct. 1980, 5(10):413-415;
105. and Chow, J. Gea-Banacloche, L. M. Pedrotti, Sanders, W. Schleich, and Scully, "The Ring Laser Gyro," Reviews of Modern Physics, Jan. 1985, 57(1):61-104, on p. 97.
106. M. O. Scully, M. S. Zubairy, and M. P. Haugan, "Proposed Optical Test of Metric Gravitation Theories," Phys. Rev. A, 1981, 24(4):2009-2016.
107. See also Scully and Zubairy, Quantum Optics (cit. n. 36), pp. 97-108.
108. For a discussion of the use of laser interferometers in gravity-wave detection see Harry Collins, Gravity's Shadow: The Search for Gravitational Waves (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2004).
109. Marian O. Scully, "Correlated Spontaneous-Emission Lasers: Quenching of Quantum Fluctuations in the Relative Phase Angle," Phys. Rev. Lett., 16 Dec. 1985, 55(25):2802-2805.
110. For the intervals between papers, I am using the dates of reception by the journals rather than the dates of publication, Marian O. Scully and M. S. Zubairy, "Theory of the Quantum-Beat Laser," Phys. Rev. A, 15 Jan. 1987, 35(2):752-758 [received 11 Aug. 1986];
111. and J. A. Bergou, M. Orszag, and Scully, "Correlated-Emission Laser: Nonlinear Theory of the Quantum-Beat Laser," ibid, 15 July 1988, 38(2):754-762 [first received 18 May 1987].
112. The two states were engineered so that their wave functions had a fixed phase relative to each other. Marian O. Scully, Shi-Yao Zhu, and Athanasios Gavrielides, "Degenerate Quantum-Beat Laser: Lasing without Inversion and Inversion without Lasing," Phys. Rev. Lett., 12 June 1989, 62(24):2813-2816, on p. 2813. For some of the many others working on lasing without inversion and cognate subjects see the references in this and the other Scully papers cited in this section.
113. Marian O. Scully, "Enhancement of the Index of Refraction via Quantum Coherence," Phys. Rev. Lett., 30 Sept. 1991, 67(14):1855-1858;
114. and Scully, "From Lasers and Masers to Phaseonium and Phasers," Phys. Rep., 1991, 219(3-6):191-201, on p. 191.
115. For some of Scully's experimental work on phaseonium, and that of other research teams, see Neal Singer, "Coupled States Clear the Darkness and Quiet the Light," Science, 2 Oct. 1992, 258:32-33;
116. and Barbara Goss Levi, "Researchers Report Evidence for Lasing without Inversion," Phys. Today, Sept. 1995, 48(9):19-20.
117. Mendelsohn et al., "Science and the Military: Setting the Problem" (cit. n. 1), pp. xiv-xxv.
118. Bromberg interview with Scully (cit. n. 5).
119. See Olival Freire, Jr., "Philosophy Enters the Optics Laboratory: Bell's Theorem and Its First Experimental Tests (1965-1982)," Studies in the History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 2006, 37(4), forthcoming.
120. See Joan Lisa Bromberg, "The Rise of 'Experimental Metaphysics' in Late Twentieth Century Physics" and "Leonard Mandel and Experimental Tests of Quantum Mechanics," unpublished manuscripts on deposit at the Center for History of Physics.
121. See, e.g., A. J. Leggett, "Experimental Approaches to the Quantum Measurement Paradox," Foundations of Physics, 1988, 18(9):939-952.
122. Paul Forman, "Inventing the Maser in Postwar America," Osiris, 2nd Ser., 1992, 7:105-134; see p. 126.
123. D. M. Greenberger, "Preface," in New Techniques and Ideas in Quantum Measurement Theory, ed. Greenberger (cit. n. 15), pp. xiii-xiv.
124. Olival Freire, Jr., "The Historical Roots of 'Foundations of Quantum Physics' as a Field of Research (1950-1970)," Found. Phys., 2004, 34:1741-1759.