Superconductivity at room temperature??

[ben m]

However, it sounds like this thread, is more concerned with the energy gain of a single electron as it is accelerated through the barrier in a Josephson junction. On average it seems like it must be true that if there is an apparent current flow through the barrier with voltage V across the barrier then the power dissipated in the barrier or radiated away is I * V.

There is no real distinction. An electron is a real thing, which must conserve energy perfectly (within the bounds of quantum uncertainty). That's the underlying fact here. Because E = qV for each electron, so sum(E) = V*sum(q) for many electrons, so sum(E)/t = V*sum(q)/t = P = IV for large sets of electrons.

So is the claim here that the energy of individual electrons that tunnel through the barrier have twice the energy of the average electrons that make up the apparent current through the barrier?

The claim is a little hard to make out. It's either that voltage is not a "real" potential energy, but only part of it, or that electric fields do something other than converting potential energy into kinetic.

* Actually, as a lowly electrical engineer I never thought much about electrons at all, I thought about a magic fluid that flowed from the positive terminal to the negative terminal.

The question is, are you one of the ones who think that the electrons move through the wires at light speed?

 

[marplots]

I too am unschooled in this. The only way I have been able to make sense of it is to think that there is a separate energy source applied at the junction (from a separate power supply) from which the "extra" energy comes. If I'm right, eventually (if it's a battery) this source would be depleted.

It at least explains why there is disagreement about conservation of energy, one side is ignoring this injection and it contributes the mysterious "acceleration" mentioned as an added energy.

The other thing that strikes me is that when experiments are run, if you do get the 2qv, it can be interpreted as either an additional energy on one electron or the predicted energy with an electron pair. What would settle it is if there is another source of the electric field in the junction that is being depleted.

By the way, I did appreciate the Chinese Checkers story. And I truly hope this won't devolve into mere name calling. It is strangely reminiscent of the DWFTTW thread where the subject eventually did work out.

 

[johanfprins]

I too am unschooled in this.

And I owe all you good people on this thread an apology. I must have driven Sol Invictus, Ben m, and Ziggurat to despair, by not acknowledging the fact that if the charge-carrier is accelerated by the junction to achieve the extra energy qV, the conservation of energy is violated. Furthermore, the defining characteristic of a superconducting charge-carrier is that it can NEVER be accelerated.

I derived the actual origin of this extra energy 4 years ago; and it is more subtle than being the result of acceleration. But before explaining this aspect (hopefully correctly this time around) I must first explain how it could happen that I could have been as stubborn as a donkey in my postings on this thread. To understand this, you must know a bit more about me and the history of my first engagement with the theory of a Josephson junction.

Unfortunately I was born with an affliction: My long term memory is severely impaired. I can, for example, do a mathematical derivation not realizing that I have already done the same derivation 2 weeks prior. I am like a computer with an excellent CPU but only a few kilobytes of memory. Fortunately I am not yet as bad as the guy who visited his doctor and told him: " Doctor I cannot remember a thing". The doctor inquired: "For how long has this been so?" And the guy responded: "For how long has what been so?"

When I realized 7 years ago that superconduction occurs by barrier-jumping of electron-orbitals, I was still firmly convinced that these orbitals must be doubly-charged or else they will not all have the same lowest energy. In my first book I thus modeled all the superconductors as having boson charge-carriers. For the ceramics, these charge carriers could be modeled as "covalent-bonds" which form between the crystallographic layers. The calculations fitted the data for both the low temperature metals, and the ceramics like YBCO, extremely well indeed. I had no issue with Josephson's model of tunneling at that point and thus argued that his model dovetails with my mechanism.

After having written and published the book (unfortunately using a VERY expensive publisher) I proceeded to analyse other published data on superconduction using my mechanism of barrier-jumping-bosons. Only then disaster struck: I found that when I calculated a flux quantum using my mechanism, it must be smaller by a factor 2 than the flux quanta which have been measured; where this factor 2 came from Heisenberg's relationship between energy and time. The only way to get the same value as experimentally found, was to assume that the charge-carriers are not doubly charged, but only singly charged.

Only then I turned my mind to Josephson tunneling. The dilemma was that if the charge-carriers are singly charged as indicated by my model when calculating the value of a flux quantum, and tunneling occurs while there is a voltage V over a Josephson junction, the radiation should only have an energy eV and not 2eV as is measured. Where does the extra energy eV comes from? At one point I reasoned that it must come from the vacuum and was excited that I have found a way to solve the world's energy problems for once and for all. Nonetheless I had sleepless nights until I finally realized that this extra energy must be added to the orbital in order for the singly-charged orbital to scale the junctio, without being accelerated. The fact that the orbital must obtain this energy in order to jump the Josephson junction stuck in my limited long-term memory without the fact that it is not generated by acceleration but rather to avoid acceleration. Only last night after searching myself to death did I find my original calculations.

As I have posted already, a superconductor must be a perfect dielectric or else an applied electric field will not be cancelled within such a material; and since the field is cancelled while a current is flowing a superconductor cannot be a conductor, since a conductor cannot cancel an applied electric field while a current is flowing. Thus a superconducting phase must in essence be an array of localized orbitals, which cancels the applied electric field by polarization. Thus the total energy of the applied electric field is stored within the orbitals. It is like a capacitor with a perfect dielectric which stores all the applied electric field-energy so that the voltage over the capacitor plates is completely cancelled.

Here I must first give a bit more detail before proceeding further to the Josephson junction: Obviously, all the applied electric-field energy can only be stored by polarization of the charge carriers when they form a minimum energy state at absolute zero. Above this temperature there are in addition to the localized superconducting charge-carriers, also free charge-carriers, but one can include them in the model without changing what I am going to state below by assuming that the superconductor is actually at absolute zero temperature: The equations and interpretation of the equations only become a bit more complicated when discussing the situation for a temperature above absolute zero.

Thus not to make the explanation more complicated, we will assume that the superconductor is at absolute zero temperature and that the applied electric field energy is totally absorbed by the internal polarization of these localized states; and that any increase in the applied electric field will also be absorbed by further polarization which increases the energies of the orbitals further. Although this increases their energies to be larger than it is without an electric-field, they can still barrier-jump while also transferring this extra internal energy: This ensures that they do not accelerate while jumping; since there is no electric-field present which can accelerate them during this movement. However, when this polarization energy becomes too large to absorb, superconduction becomes impossible: This is one of the reasons why a superconductor has a critical current.

Now back to the Josephson junction. Without an applied electric field over the junction, the orbitals barrier jump it as if it is not there, since it is thin enough to allow this to happen. With the electric field the orbital can only jump without encountering this electric-field by increasing its internal energy by qV. Thus this is the extra potential energy it has when it reaches the other side; and which it must have to move without acceleration as the charge-carriers within a superconductor must move or else they do not form a superconducting state. Since there is plenty of stored electric-field energy within a superconductor, this added energy is extracted from this stored energy and therefore there is no violation of the conservation of energy.

I apologize again for my bad long-term memory. It has embarrassed me all my life. Oh why an I not be like Stephen Hawking who can do complicated mathematics totally within his cranium? I envy him!

I just realized that I have also been unclear about this aspect in my recent book, and must therefore issue a more detailed explanation. This will be done on my website and also sent to those persons who have already bought the book and those who are buying the rest of the present copies I have. The new printing will be changed. I will have to also change the cover since the Vatican asked me not to use the image of God that is on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

 

[Skwinty]

Considering that only .01% of the electrons involved become superconducting, we can say that these are abnormal electrons.

Adding to this state of abnormality:

Electrons (Fermions) spin1/2 conform to Fermi-Dirac statistics

Paired electrons (Bosons) spin 1 conform to Bose einstein statistics.

According to existing theory, only bosons can superconduct.

 

[johanfprins]

Considering that only .01% of the electrons involved become superconducting, we can say that these are abnormal electrons.

Adding to this state of abnormality:

Electrons (Fermions) spin1/2 conform to Fermi-Dirac statistics

Paired electrons (Bosons) spin 1 conform to Bose einstein statistics.

According to existing theory, only bosons can superconduct.

The reason for this misconception follows from the accepted fact that all the charge-carriers of a superconductor must have the same lowest energy; and it is then reasoned that only bosons can all have the same energy within a material. This is not correct. Take, for example, the donor electrons on a regular array of donors within an n-type semiconductor. At low temperature these donor electrons all have the same energy even though they each have a spin 1/2; i.e. even though they are fermions.

Furthermore, it is incorrectly argued that a Bose-Einstein Condensate can exist of a collection of "particles" all of which have the same lowest energy. A Bose-Einstein Condensate is in fact a SINGLE holistic macro-wave. The individual constituents from which it has formed disappear after it has formed. That is why a laser beam does not exist of separate photons, but is a single macro- coherent light wave; as we all know that it must be. The photons all entangled to lose their previous individual existences.

 

[Skwinty]

Well, Marouchkine leaves enough wriggle room due to his classification of superconductors. ie: Conventional, non conventional and organic.

I have yet to finish reading his 326 page book so I have not yet got to his explanation of unconventional and organic super conductor.

The bosons only applies to classical or conventional superconductors.

Fascinating stuff.

 

[johanfprins]

Well, Marouchkine leaves enough wriggle room due to his classification of superconductors. ie: Conventional, non conventional and organic.

I have read Marouchkine's book. It is on my shelf. In the end he invokes solitons, without really defining what he means by this term. I suppose we must forgive him for this oversight since all physicists have used the term "particle" for the last three hundred years without defining what a "particle" actually is.

 

[Skwinty]

What in your opinion is the difference between soliton and a single holistic macro-wave?

See my previous post for Marouchkine soliton.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6659705&postcount=306

ETA:

Reading your paper on Causality and Relativity in Quantum Physics now, so I will get a better idea of the holistic wave there.

 

[sol invictus]

Now back to the Josephson junction. Without an applied electric field over the junction, the orbitals barrier jump it as if it is not there, since it is thin enough to allow this to happen. With the electric field the orbital can only jump without encountering this electric-field by increasing its internal energy by qV. Thus this is the extra potential energy it has when it reaches the other side; and which it must have to move without acceleration as the charge-carriers within a superconductor must move or else they do not form a superconducting state. Since there is plenty of stored electric-field energy within a superconductor, this added energy is extracted from this stored energy and therefore there is no violation of the conservation of energy.

I'm not sure what you mean by "orbital", as in "the orbitals barrier jump". I asume you mean "electron", or maybe "electron in some specific state"?

Regardless - if your "orbitals" have charge e, your new explanation fails for precisely the same reason as your old one. A charge cannot move through an electric field without "encountering" it, that's gibberish. Any and all charges moving through electric fields are accelerated by them, and lose precisely qV of potential energy. Therefore the charge carriers in a superconductor have charge 2e.

By the way, the only way out of this conclusion is if the minimum kinetic energy of the charge carriers on the left of the barrier is greater than the minimum KE of the carriers on the right by precisely eV. Such a thing is at least conceivable in quantum mechanics, but it would require that the superconductor on the left is physically different from the one on the right, even though the electric field inside both is the same (zero).

 

[johanfprins]

What in your opinion is the difference between soliton and a single holistic macro-wave?

As far as I know the word soliton should be exclusively used for the type of non-harmonic waves which were first observed to from in front of boats moving along an inland channel. The restoring forces involved are non-linear. I have also noted that the word soliton is nowadays loosely used to mean a single localized matter-wave. This should not be done since an electron wave, whether it spreads over the whole material (delocalized), or localized at a donor site, it is and remains a harmonic wave: i.e the wave equation is that for simple harmonic motion.

Now to explain a single holistic macro-wave, I suggest that we start off with light. Unfortunately a photon is considered to be a particle. It is not. It is just the lowest energy light-wave that can exist for that frequency; just as Planck originally intended when he modeled cavity radiation correctly in terms of standing waves.

All that the quantum of light was meant to imply is that an allowed standing wave (as allowed by the boundaries of the cavity) with that frequency cannot manifest unless there is at least an energy h(nu) for it to manifest. And as the temperature increases such a standing wave can only increase its total energy in steps h(nu). This means that the standing wave is still a single wave with a frequency (nu,) even though it increased its energy in steps. It is NOT a collection of separately identifiable "photon-particles". It is thus a holistic macro-wave which formed by the entanglement of waves, each of which must have at least an energy h(nu)

Unfortunately Einstein's model for the photo-electric effect brought about the concept that a photon is a particle. Although Einstein got the Nobel Prize for it, he, later in his life, regretted his model; but could just not put his finger on where he went wrong; just as he later could not put his finger on where the Copenhagen interpretation went wrong. The fact is that you can derive Einstein's equation for the photo-electric effect purely in terms of the entanglement of a light wave with energy h(nu) with an electron wave. I do this is my book. Where does the photon come from when you use laser light. Although laser light does not consist of separate photons, it can disentangle to free photon-waves when the boundary conditions require it to do so.

So what I conclude is that all of quantum mechanics can be modeled in terms of only waves which change in shape size and energy when the boundary conditions change; and one of these changes is to entangle with other waves to lose the identities they had before entangling. When generating laser light within a cavity one is changing the boundary conditions in such a manner that the photon-waves emitted by the excited atoms entangle to form a single holistic macro-wave.

The superconducting phase that I discovered 10 years ago by extracting electrons from a diamond surface is also such an single entangled macro-wave "within" which separate electron waves do not exist anymore. It seems that the extracted electrons first form pairs by entangling with spin-up and spin down; and that these bosons then entangle to form a single holistic macro-wave. similar to a standing light wave in a cavity.

My papers on ArXive have been written a long time ago and my insight since that time has been broadened notwithstanding my memory problem. So when reading them, be careful!

 

[sol invictus]

As far as I know the word soliton should be exclusively used for the type of non-harmonic waves which were first observed to from in front of boats moving along an inland channel.

"Soliton" simply means a non-dispersing pulse. Water waves in channels are one example, but there are others.

Now to explain a single holistic macro-wave, I suggest that we start off with light. Unfortunately a photon is considered to be a particle. It is not. It is just the lowest energy light-wave that can exist for that frequency; just as Planck originally intended when he modeled cavity radiation correctly in terms of standing waves.

In a cavity, that's exactly what the word "photon" means - a photon is one quantum of one of the modes of the electromanetic field inside the cavity.

All that the quantum of light was meant to imply is that an allowed standing wave (as allowed by the boundaries of the cavity) with that frequency cannot manifest unless there is at least an energy h(nu) for it to manifest. And as the temperature increases such a standing wave can only increase its total energy in steps h(nu). This means that the standing wave is still a single wave with a frequency (nu,) even though it increased its energy in steps. It is NOT a collection of separately identifiable "photon-particles". It is thus a holistic macro-wave which formed by the entanglement of waves, each of which must have at least an energy h(nu)

That agrees pretty precisely with the standard view. You're attacking some sort of straw-physics-man you've constructed in your head.

Unfortunately Einstein's model for the photo-electric effect brought about the concept that a photon is a particle.

In quantum mechanics, one can form superpositions of quantum states. Consider a very large cavity with many closely spaced modes. One can combine some of those modes to form a little lump that is well localized in position and has a well-defined momentum and frequency (i.e. it moves at the speed of light and carries energy hv). That's called a "wave-packet", and it's the quantum version of a particle.

Now, it's true that the position of this "particle" is not perfectly defined, because the packet has a non-zero size. It's also true that the momentum and energy and frequency aren't perfectly well defined, for exactly analogous reasons. All of that is perfectly well understood and accepted, it's all basic quantum mechanics. It's the first thing you learn as a student, essentially.

 

[johanfprins]

I'm not sure what you mean by "orbital", as in "the orbitals barrier jump". I asume you mean "electron", or maybe "electron in some specific state"?

First we must try and understand what you mean by an electron in a material. An electron, just like a solitary electron outside the material? The fact is that we talk about "electrons" moving through a material to convey a current forgetting that the current is transported by pseudo particles. The charge carriers within a metal are not "free electrons" but wave packets formed by the superposition of the delocalized electron waves binding the atoms together. Thus each pseudo-particle, is a joint creation by all the N valence electron waves that superpose to form it.

The simplest electron "orbital" as I term them, is a donor-electron at its donor-site. It is localized and immobile unless it gets kicked into the conduction band by a temperature fluctuation. In the case of a superconductor this "kick" is supplied by a quantum fluctuation as allowed by Heisenberg's "uncertainty" relationship for energy and time. The time in which the orbital can move to another suitable site is thus curtailed to be only (delta)t by this relationship.

Orbitals can also form by other means. Eugene Wigner already derived in the 1930's that electrons will form "harmonic" orbitals at low temperatures, where each orbital can be modeled as being an "electron" that performs simple harmonic motion through an induced positive charge. When using these orbitals as being responsible for superconduction in metals, one obtains a perfect description of superconduction; including the isotope effect. It also explains why certain metals do not show an isotope effect but still superconduct. According to BCS such a metal should not superconduct. Therefore the main stream physicists had to use a fudge factor to get rid of this inconvenient fact.

Regardless - if your "orbitals" have charge e, your new explanation fails for precisely the same reason as your old one.

I do not think so and am at the moment trying to think how I can explain this fact more simply.

By the way, the only way out of this conclusion is if the minimum kinetic energy of the charge carriers on the left of the barrier is greater than the minimum KE of the carriers on the right by precisely eV. Such a thing is at least conceivable in quantum mechanics, but it would require that the superconductor on the left is physically different from the one on the right, even though the electric field inside both is the same (zero).

I could not have explained it better. The only difference is that what you call kinetic energy is polarization energy; and because of the change in polarization energy over the junction you do end up effectively with two "different" superconductors. Just give me a bit of time to get my befuddled old brains a chance to recuperate so that I can avoid making again a fool of myself; and I am sure I will explain it better than I did up to now

 

[The Man]

Exactly what is going on in the barrier?

Does an electron enter the barrier with a net zero energy, gain qV energy as it passes through the barrier, lose that energy just as it passes out of the barrier through an electromagnetic emission and enter the other side of the junction with exactly zero energy?

Does the electron have a non-zero energy when it enters the barrier, gain qV energy in the barrier, lose that energy just as it passes out of the barrier through an electromagnetic emission and exit the barrier on average with the same non-zero energy that it entered the barrier with?

Or is my understanding here so screwed up that my question makes no sense?

The process by which the electrons pass through the barrier is quantum - they tunnel through it. As a result you can't really ask about their energy "while" they are inside it. Naively their kinetic energy would be negative, since total energy is conserved and the barrier is high. And indeed, there is an approximation (the WKB approximation) in which one uses that to compute the rate at which the tunneling occurs.

But more accurately there is no sense in which the kinetic energy is ever negative. No measurement will ever reveal it to be so, and in particular, no photon emitted by the electron will have measured energy greater than qV.

To my understanding, based on the virtual particles of the vacuum, the electron is never actually within the barrier, as Sol asserts. Nor does the electron borrow energy from the vacuum to pass over the barrier. The real electron is annihilated by a virtual positron near the barrier increasing the localized vacuum energy by one electron. There is then some non-zero probability that said excess vacuum energy (in the form of a real electron) can be on the other side of the barrier. So it is not that the electron borrows energy to get over or through the barrier (which it must then return) but that the local vacuum felid "borrows" the energy of the real electron that is must then return as a real electron with some non-zero probability of that return happening on the other side of the barrier. Though being a amateur this is mostly just speculation on my part.

 

[johanfprins]

"Soliton" simply means a non-dispersing pulse. Water waves in channels are one example, but there are others.

Thanks for the info that there others also: Can these be modelled in terms of harmonic waves?

In a cavity, that's exactly what the word "photon" means - a photon is one quantum of one of the modes of the electromanetic field inside the cavity.

I am glad we agree on this since there are many people who think that a quantum of light emitted by a source into the cavity remains as a "photon-particle" within the cavity.

That agrees pretty precisely with the standard view. You're attacking some sort of straw-physics-man you've constructed in your head.

i am glad to hear that: although you could have fooled me since a photon is accepted in particle physics to be "a particle". So you agree it is a wave with energy h(nu) which can be localized but need not be localized. You agree that to call a photon a "particle" is a misnomer?

In quantum mechanics, one can form superpositions of quantum states. Consider a very large cavity with many closely spaced modes. One can combine some of those modes to form a little lump that is well localized in position and has a well-defined momentum and frequency (i.e. it moves at the speed of light and carries energy hv). That's called a "wave-packet", and it's the quantum version of a particle.

So how do these photon wave packets form in a smaller cavity when there are not enough waves to superpose?

Now, it's true that the position of this "particle" is not perfectly defined, because the packet has a non-zero size. It's also true that the momentum and energy and frequency aren't perfectly well defined, for exactly analogous reasons. All of that is perfectly well understood and accepted, it's all basic quantum mechanics. It's the first thing you learn as a student, essentially.

I do not think it is well understood. You say that a single electron wave has an uncertainty in the position of the electron's center-of-mass and in the electron's momentum. Galileo, however taught us that a body has inertia and Newton invented mass to model inertia.

This means that any body with mass must have an inertial reference frame within which it is stationary: i.e. within which there is no uncertainty in its simultaneous position and momentum. Now as far as I know an electron has mass so that there cannot be an uncertainty in its position and momentum.

And then you claim that this is well-understood in quantum mechanics why when you know the position of an electron you cannot know anything about its momentum; and when you know its momentum you cannot know its position. No entity with mass can act in this way since this will cause all physics (including Schroedinger's equation) that have been developed since Newton to fall flat on its face.!?

 

[sol invictus]

Thanks for the info that there others also: Can these be modelled in terms of harmonic waves?

Purely harmonic waves - not in the absence of some other force, no. But an electron in a harmonic potential does have soliton-like solutions (coherent states, for example), and electrons in materials can as well.

You agree that to call a photon a "particle" is a misnomer?

"Particle" is a technical term in physics that refers precisely to things like photons. So no, it cannot possibly be a misnomer. It certainly leads to confusion in many cases, though.

So how do these photon wave packets form in a smaller cavity when there are not enough waves to superpose?

They don't and can't. The simplest way to understand that is via the Heisenberg uncertainty principle (which itself follows simply from the fact that we're talking about waves).

I do not think it is well understood. You say that a single electron wave has an uncertainty in the position of the electron's center-of-mass and in the electron's momentum. Galileo, however taught us that a body has inertia and Newton invented mass to model inertia.

This means that any body with mass must have an inertial reference frame within which it is stationary:

Yes.

i.e. within which there is no uncertainty in its simultaneous position and momentum.

Nonsense. "Stationary" means <p>=0. "No uncertainty" means <p²>-<p>² = 0, or simply <p²>=0 in the stationary frame. But since <p²>=/=<p>² for a wave, stationary does not imply no uncertainty.

As for the uncertainty in position, stationary implies nothing about that at all. One can obviously have a very long-wavelength standing wave, which is stationary but has a very large uncertainty in position.

 

[Ziggurat]

And I owe all you good people on this thread an apology.

First and foremost you still owe Sol an apology for comparing him to a Nazi. But I know that no apology will be forthcoming. It's disapointing, but sadly predictable.

Furthermore, the defining characteristic of a superconducting charge-carrier is that it can NEVER be accelerated.

Either you have a very strange notion of what it means to accelerate a charge carrier, or you're claiming that the inductance of superconductors is infinite. If it's the former, such a statement is useless since the standard definition is standard for a reason, and it's not going to change. If it's the latter, you're wrong.

Charge carriers get accelerated in superconductors all the time. That's how you change the current in a superconductor. It is impossible by definition to change the current in a superconductor without accelerating the charge carriers, and we know (because we do it all the time) that we can change the current in a superconductor.

I derived the actual origin of this extra energy 4 years ago; and it is more subtle than being the result of acceleration.

I don't care how subtle it is: it still violates conservation of energy. You can't avoid the total energy budget problem by appealing to special properties of superconductors. Unless those properties include violating energy conservation, the macroscopic restraints on energy remain. You have consistently failed to address this problem.

As I have posted already, a superconductor must be a perfect dielectric or else an applied electric field will not be cancelled within such a material; and since the field is cancelled while a current is flowing a superconductor cannot be a conductor, since a conductor cannot cancel an applied electric field while a current is flowing.

Nonsense. The field inside a conductor scales linearly with the resistivity. Take the limit of zero resistivity (a perfect conductor), and you get exactly that: a cancelled electric field even in the presence of current. The only intrinsic difference between a superconductor and an ideal conductor is the Meisner effect.

Here I must first give a bit more detail before proceeding further to the Josephson junction: Obviously, all the applied electric-field energy can only be stored by polarization of the charge carriers when they form a minimum energy state at absolute zero.

No. Polarization doesn't store energy, it reduces energy. By polarizing your material, you're storing LESS energy than if you didn't polarize it. Why? Because you've reduced the electric field strength, and the electric field stores energy. The energy of a charged capacitor comes from the integral of the square of the field between the plates. If you cancel the field completely, you have no energy.

 

[johanfprins]

Purely harmonic waves - not in the absence of some other force, no. But an electron in a harmonic potential does have soliton-like solutions (coherent states, for example), and electrons in materials can as well.

Soliton-"like": So you also distinguish between solitons and localized electron-waves. But then attack me viciously when I did it above?1

jp: You agree that to call a photon a "particle" is a misnomer?
Sol: "Particle" is a technical term in physics that refers precisely to things like photons. So no, it cannot possibly be a misnomer. It certainly leads to confusion in many cases, though.

A technical term is useless if it is not defined; So I am sure that will be able to educate me by giving me a self-consistent definition of what a "particle" is. I am looking forward to this one.

JP: So how do these photon wave packets form in a smaller cavity when there are not enough waves to superpose?
Sol: They don't and can't. The simplest way to understand that is via the Heisenberg uncertainty principle (which itself follows simply from the fact that we're talking about waves).

So you are saying that a small cavity cannot emit a photon-wave since such a wave cannot form within a small cavity?

JP:I do not think it is well understood. You say that a single electron wave has an uncertainty in the position of the electron's center-of-mass and in the electron's momentum. Galileo, however taught us that a body has inertia and Newton invented mass to model inertia.
This means that any body with mass must have an inertial reference frame within which it is stationary:
Sol:Yes.

Great we are getting somewhere

JP: i.e. within which there is no uncertainty in its simultaneous position and momentum.
Sol: Nonsense. "Stationary" means <p>=0. "No uncertainty" means <p2>-<p>2 = 0, or simply <p2>=0 in the stationary frame. But since <p2>=/=<p>2 for a wave, stationary does not imply no uncertainty.
As for the uncertainty in position, stationary implies nothing about that at all. One can obviously have a very long-wavelength standing wave, which is stationary but has a very large uncertainty in position.

So you are saying that a long wave with mass energy has no center-of-mass, and therefore its position is "uncertain". Why will it not have a center of mass if it has mass-energy? Sounds like a very queer wave to me. It is like saying that the position of long rod is "uncertain"?

Where you have all gone wrong is to cling to the crackpot belief that the intensity of a matter wave is a probability whereas for all other harmonic waves their intensities relate to their energies. So when you correctly interpret the intensity of a matter wave as its mass and gravitational energy, then what you call uncertainty is the distribution of its mass, and what you call the "expectation value" of its position is its center-of-mass and what you call its "expectation value" of its momentum, is its actual momentum. There are thus no uncertainties involved. It is like saying that a solid ball has an uncertainty in its position equal to its radius. Its position is uniquely determined by its center-of-mass which is at the center of the ball.t

 

[sol invictus]

A technical term is useless if it is not defined; So I am sure that will be able to educate me by giving me a self-consistent definition of what a "particle" is. I am looking forward to this one.

A wave-packet of a quantum field that has a well-localized position and momentum.

So you are saying that a small cavity cannot emit a photon-wave since such a wave cannot form within a small cavity?

The probability for a small cavity to emit a photon with wavelength longer than the cavity is small, yes. Sometimes those reduced probabilities are referred to as grey body factors.

So you are saying that a long wave with mass energy has no center-of-mass, and therefore its position is "uncertain". Why will it not have a center of mass if it has mass-energy? Sounds like a very queer wave to me.

It's called "quantum mechanics", Johan. It's the best-tested theory in the history of science. The waves we're talking about are waves of probability density, not water (or ether).

The center of mass does have an expectation value, but the square of that expectation value is not generally equal to the expectation value of the square. This is basic, basic stuff.

Where you have all gone wrong is to cling to the crackpot belief that the intensity of a matter wave is a probability whereas for all other harmonic waves their intensities relate to their energies. So when you correctly interpret the intensity of a matter wave as its mass and gravitational energy, then what you call uncertainty is the distribution of its mass, and what you call the "expectation value" of its position is its center-of-mass and what you call its "expectation value" of its momentum, is its actual momentum. There are thus no uncertainties involved. It is like saying that a solid ball has an uncertainty in its position equal to its radius. Its position is uniquely determined by its center-of-mass which is at the center of the ball.t

It's not at all like that. In any case I'm not going to argue further with you - as we said before, if we cannot agree on the most basic principles of physics (like conservation of energy), we'll never agree on anything else.

 

[sol invictus]

I do not think so and am at the moment trying to think how I can explain this fact more simply.

I could not have explained it better. The only difference is that what you call kinetic energy is polarization energy; and because of the change in polarization energy over the junction you do end up effectively with two "different" superconductors. Just give me a bit of time to get my befuddled old brains a chance to recuperate so that I can avoid making again a fool of myself; and I am sure I will explain it better than I did up to now

As Zig has already pointed out, there's no such thing as "polarization energy" - and even if there were, it would be the same on both sides of the junction, since the E field is equal (and zero) on either side.

I'll wait for your "better explanation", I think we should focus on this point and not discuss your other, um, unconventional ideas before this one is settled.

 

[Skwinty]

As Zig has already pointed out, there's no such thing as "polarization energy" - .

http://www.springerlink.com/content/qh6kt3274p470gp3/

http://www.google.co.za/search?q=po...md=ivns&ei=4kUKTeTDOI_sOfmG0aMG&start=10&sa=N


Here are 2 links to polarization energy.

There are about 8,7 million more links to this topic.