mwengler

EDIT: 1:19 PM PST 22 December 2010 I completed this post.  I didn't realize an uncompleted version was already posted earlier.   I wanted to read the quantum sequence because I've been intrigued by the nature of measurement throughout my physics career.  I was happy to see that articles such as joint configuration use beams of photons and half and fully silvered mirrors to make its points.  I spent years in graduate school working with a two-path interferometer with one moving mirror which we used to make spectrometric measurements on materials and detectors.  I studied the quantization of the electromagnetic field, reading and rereading books such as Yariv's Quantum Electronics and Marcuse's Principles of Quantum Electronics.  I developed with my friend David Woody a photodetector ttheory of extremely sensitive heterodyne mixers which explained the mysterious noise floor of these devices in terms of the shot noise from detecting the stream of photons which are the "Local Oscillator" of that mixer.   My point being that I AM a physicist, and I am even a physicist who has worked with the kinds of configurations shown in this blog post, both experimentally and theoretically.  I did all this work 20 years ago and have been away from any kind of Quantum optics stuff for 15 years, but I don't think that is what is holding me back here.   So when I read and reread the joint configuration blog post, I am concerned that it makes absolutely no sense to me.  I am hoping that someone out there DOES understand this article and can help me understand it.  Someone who understands the more traditional kinds of interferometer configurations such as that described for example here and could help put this joint configuration blog post in terms that relate it to this more usual interferometer situation.   I'd be happy to be referred to this discussion if it has already taken place somewhere.  Or I'd be happy to try it in comments to this discussion post.  Or I'd be happy to talk t