One Thing After Another: Why the Passage of Time Is Not an Illusion

Does time seem to pass, even though it doesn’t, really? Many philosophers think the answer is ‘Yes’—at least when ‘time’s passing’ is understood in a particular way. They take time’s passing to be a process by which each time in turn acquires a special status, such as the status of being the only time that exists, or being the only time that is present. This chapter suggests that, on the contrary, all we perceive is temporal succession, one thing after another, a notion to which modern physics is not inhospitable. The contents of perception are best described in terms of ‘before’ and ‘after’, rather than ‘past’, ‘present, and ‘future’

Thin film atomic hydrogen detectors

Thin film and bead thermistor atomic surface recombination hydrogen detectors were investigated both experimentally and theoretically. Devices were constructed on a thin Mylar film substrate. Using suitable Wheatstone bridge techniques sensitivities of 80 microvolts/2x10 to the 13th power atoms/sec are attainable with response time constants on the order of 5 seconds

Optically induced free carrier light modulator

Signal carrier laser beam is optically modulated by a second laser beam of different frequency acting on a free carrier source to which the signal carrier laser is directed. The second laser beam affects the transmission characteristics of the free carrier source to light from the signal carrier laser, thus modulating it

Method and apparatus for optical modulating a light signal Patent

Method and apparatus for optically modulating light or microwave bea

SU(m|n) supersymmetric Calogero-Sutherland model confined in harmonic potential

In this work, we study a continuous quantum system of a mixture of bosons and fermions with the supersymmetry SU(m|n). The particles are confined in a harmonic well and interact with each other through the 1/r2 interaction. The ground state wavefunction is constructed explicitly for the most general SU(m|n) case, with the ground state energy given explicitly. The full energy spectrum of excitations in the SU(m|n) model is also equal spaced. In the limiting case where there are no bosons in the system, our results reduce to those obtained previously.Comment: 9 pages, preprint of ETH-Lausanne (August 1996