Weber2 said:
The frequency of the interference filter is specified very clearly in Ref [14], which is available at
http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/...xte/2005/5934/pdf/doktorarbeit_sreinhardt.pdf . In particular, the caption of Figure 6.7 of Ref [14] states “… and an interference filter (transmission 548 nm, half-width 10 nm (s.[Mer00])) are placed”. This is the transition frequency \eta_o in the laboratory frame as seen in Figure 3.1 of Ref [14]. .
Thanks for the link. It confirms what I previousloy surmised, namely, that the filter is irrelevant. Look, the filter is centered on 548 nm with half-wide of 10nm, so it passes quite well anything between 538 nm and 558 nm. Now, they are using a maximum beta of 0.064, so the transverse Doppler shifted wavelength is about 549 nm, which is still more or less at the center of the +-10 nm band pass. So the flouresence they observed is perfectly suitable for establishing the laser tuning at the Lamb dip.
The point you should keep in mind is that the experiment is not measuring the frequency of the ion emissions, it is simply using the intensity of those emissions at various laser settings to identify the resonant condition. A filter of half-width 10 nm centered on 548 nm will obviously work just as well as one centered on 549 nm to identify the distinctive Lamb dip. Also, note that they made adjustments until they maximized the flouresence, which ensures they are looking at the main resonance, and not some incidental side resonance, as you seem to suppose.
Your fundamental confusion is that you were misled into thinking the filter they used would somehow cause them to mis-identify the resonant condition, and you compounded this misconception with the idea that the Stark and/or Zeeman effects would somehow conspire to fool the experimenters into thinking they were looking at emissions from nominal ions, and then you RE-compounded your confusion by convincing yourself that the issue had something to do with interpretation of special relativity, when in fact you were claiming gross experimental error (falsely, as it turns out).
You should also note that many other experiments of this general kind have been performed with no filter at all, so your whole thesis is based on a misunderstanding of a very particular experimental detail of one particular experiment.
Weber2 said:
I do not think that there is an error in the experiments. For example, if the photons emitted at \eta_o (in the moving ion-frame) were to be measured then the interference filter would have to be at \eta_o/\gamma in the laboratory frame. However, this would require a-priori knowledge of the time-dilation factor \gamma, which is what the experiments are trying to evaluate (at high speeds).
You completely misunderstand the situation, because you mistakenly imagined that a filter (used in one particular experiment) had a narrow enough bandwidth to exclude the photons from the ions at resonance, which led you to believe the experimenters must have tuned the lasers to a sub-population of ions, whose resonant frequency you fantasized must have been shifted by the Stark and/or Zeeman effects by an amount that exactly matched the transverse Doppler shift between ions and lab (so it could get through the infinitely narrow filter that you mistakenly imagined). Hopefully you now realize that the filter they used can pass 549 nm photons with no difficulty, so the flouresence profile from the ions (at 548 nm in their rest frame) will be clearly apparent, and hence the lasers will be tuned correctly, and hence the test is valid and np*na/no^2 = 1 for Lorentz invariance.
(Actually they evaluated np and na at two different ion speeds, 0.03c and 0.064c, and then showed that (np1*na1)/(np2*na2) = 1 to extremely high precision.)
Weber2 said:
Therefore, placing the interference filters at \eta_o (in the laboratory frame) is quite reasonable in the experiments and not an error.
It is not an error, but only because the bandpass of the filter is perfectly well suited to pass the resonant emissions. If the filter had the effect that you fantasize it had (i.e., blocking the main resonant emissions from contributing to the flouresence, leading them to mis-identify the primary resonance condition and laser settings), it WOULD have been a gross and totally inexplicable experimental error. Experimental physicists are not nearly as stupid as you imagine.
Weber2 said:
However, the time-dilation effect between the emitted and observed photons needs to be included in the SR calculations with the use of the pre-filter --- since the observed lamb-dip is for photons at a specific frequency\eta_o in the laboratory frame.
Hopefully by now you see that your claim is completely erroneous, based on a total misunderstanding of the experiment, combined with numerous logical fallacies and non-sequiturs. The filter used in the experiment is quite suitable for correctly identifying the Lamb dip for the main ion resonance of 548 nm in the rest frame of the ions (about 549 in the lab frame). The appropriate value to use for nu_a* in the definition of R is nu_0, i.e., the frequency corresponding to 548nm, and this gives R = 1 is Lorentz invariance is true. Also, as mentioned above, the paper actually bases its test on two non-zero velocities, so nu0 doesn't even enter into the final calculations.
I have saved a copy to my desktop because more than likely this thread will be deleted soon too. While the papers may have been published in peer reviewed journals, they point to potential problems with relativity theory and as such are obviously not welcome here.
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