If you really want to cite someone he admires, you could note that Eliezer Yudkowsky uses 1 as a probability when trying (and failing) to explain quantum mechanics, because he writes probability amplitudes of absolute value 1.

I’m glad I’ve never pissed off a career physicist, cause this is concise, targeted destruction

[–] titotal@awful.systems 11 points 1 year ago (5 children)

If you want more of this, I wrote a full critique of his mangled intro to quantum physics, where he forgets the whole "conservation of energy" thing.

[–] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

despite phase shifts being the main cause of the described effects.

what are the other ones?

(when i'm thinking about splitter with pi/2 phase shift, i'm thinking about coupled line coupler or its waveguide analogue, but i come from microwave land on this one. maybe this works in fibers?)

[–] titotal@awful.systems 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

what are the other ones?

I guess the rest of the experimental setup that recombines the photon amplitiudes. Like if you put 5 extra beam splitters in the bottom path, there wouldn't be full destructive interference.

when i’m thinking about splitter with pi/4 phase shift, i’m thinking about coupled line coupler or its waveguide analogue, but i come from microwave land on this one. maybe this works in fibers?

I'm not sure how you'd actually build a symmetric beam splitter: wikipedia said you'd need to induce a particular extra phase shift on both transmission and reflection. (I'm fully theoretical physics so I'm not too familiar).

[–] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 year ago

pi/2, sorry

In microwave land we have something called rat race coupler which can be used as an in-phase 1:1 splitter. This thing can be manufactured in waveguides so maybe (narrowband) fiber optic implementation is possible

https://www.microwaves101.com/encyclopedias/rat-race-couplers

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