Publications of Emilio Santos: Difference between revisions

Scientific Paper
Title	Publications of Emilio Santos
Read in full	Link to paper
Author(s)	Alwyn Van der Merwe, Emilio C Santos
Keywords	bibliography, local realism, Bell inequalities, stochastic electrodynamics, stochastic optics, Wigner function, zero-point field
Published	2006
Journal	Foundations of Physics
Volume	36
Number	4
No. of pages	10
Pages	602-612

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Latest revision as of 13:20, 21 July 2026

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Abstract

This bibliography lists 120 technical publications, 3 books and 38 chapters or proceedings contributions over the carrer of a great and dedicated scientist.

Overview

This is not a research paper but the complete bibliography of the Spanish physicist Emilio Santos Corchero, printed in Foundations of Physics 36(4) in April 2006 as part of the Festschrift issue assembled in his honour by the journal's editor Alwyn Van der Merwe. The count given in the archive abstract is accurate: the list runs to 120 numbered technical articles (1963–2004), 3 books, and 38 chapters of books and conference proceedings.

Its value on this wiki is as a map. Read straight through, it documents one of the most sustained programmes of principled dissent in twentieth-century quantum foundations — a physicist who spent four decades arguing, in mainstream journals and against the current, that the experiments claimed to refute local realism did not in fact do so, and who did the detailed optical calculations needed to make that case rather than merely asserting it. It also shows that this work ran in parallel with an entirely conventional and productive career in condensed-matter, nuclear and relativistic astrophysics.

What the list contains

Early work: solid state and many-body theory (1963–1975)

Santos began under C. A. Coulson at Oxford, and the first entries are Thomas–Fermi and density-functional calculations on graphite: the formation energy of vacancies (Proc. Roy. Soc. A 274, 1963), lattice deformation by interstitial carbon atoms and C₂ molecules, interlayer forces (Phys. Rev. B 6, 1972), and later work with the Englert–Schwinger equation. Alongside these are papers on electron correlation energy, Hartree–Fock in the coordinate representation, and inhomogeneity corrections to the Thomas–Fermi theory of nuclei. This strand never stops entirely; graphite binding papers recur into 1990.

Stochastic electrodynamics and the zero-point field (1968–1990s)

The turn to foundations is dated by entry 7, "Is there an electromagnetic background radiation underlying the quantum phenomena?" (An. Fís. 64, 1968). What follows is a systematic attempt to derive quantum behaviour from classical electrodynamics plus a real random zero-point radiation field: "A Lagrangian formulation of the theory of random motion" (1969), "On the derivation of the Schrödinger equation from Newtonian mechanics" (1972), "Classical interpretation of the uncertainty relations" (1972), "The harmonic oscillator in stochastic electrodynamics" and "Foundations of stochastic electrodynamics" (both Nuovo Cimento B, 1974), and path-integral formulations with L. Pesquera.

Two results in this vein are worth singling out because they engage the standard evidence directly. With R. Blanco and L. Pesquera, Santos published a two-part study (Phys. Rev. D 27 and 29, 1983) deriving the Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution from a Rayleigh–Jeans spectrum for classical relativistic multiperiodic systems — an attack on the textbook claim that classical radiation–matter equilibrium necessarily gives the ultraviolet catastrophe. With Blanco and H. M. França he gave a classical account of the Debye law for the specific heat of solids (Phys. Rev. A 43, 1991). There is also work on the Casimir interaction between a dipole oscillator and a solenoid, spontaneous emission in confined space, and "Zeropoint Radiation: Real or virtual?".

Local realism and the Bell inequalities (1983–2004)

This is the largest and most contentious block, running from 1983 to the end of the list, and much of it was done with Trevor W Marshall, Franco Selleri and Miguel Ferrero. The opening salvo is "Local realism has not been refuted by atomic cascade experiments" (Phys. Lett. 98A, 1983, with Marshall and Selleri), and the closing one, twenty-one years later, is "The failure to perform a loophole-free test of Bell's inequality supports local realism" (Found. Phys. 34, 2004).

The argument is not that Bell's theorem is wrong but that the experiments testing it have all required auxiliary assumptions — chiefly fair sampling, given the low detection efficiencies of photon counters — and that explicit local models can be built which reproduce the data. The list contains those models: "Local realist model for the coincidence rates in atomic-cascade experiments" (1985), "Local realist photon model compatible with Malus's law" (1985), and the deliberately provocative "Does quantum mechanics violate the Bell inequalities?" (Phys. Rev. Lett. 66, 1991) with its reply to comment. Related entries insist on the detection loophole quantitatively — "Relevance of detection efficiency in the optical tests of Bell inequalities" (1989), "Critical analysis of the empirical tests of local hidden-variables theories" (1992), "Unreliability of performed tests of Bell's inequality using parametric down-converted photons" (1996).

Santos did not only object. A substantial group of entries proposes better tests: "Proposed atomic cascade experimental test of symmetric local hidden variables theories" (1987), "Atomic-cascade experiment with detection of the recoil atom" (1994), "Loophole-free test of the Bell inequality" (Phys. Rev. A 51, 1995, with Huelga and Ferrero), "Proposed test for realist theories using Rydberg atoms coupled to a high-Q resonator" (1995), and "Proposed optical test of Bell's inequalities not resting upon the fair sampling assumption" (2004).

Stochastic optics and the Wigner representation

The technical machinery behind the local models is set out under the name stochastic optics: "Stochastic optics: A reaffirmation of the wave nature of light" (Found. Phys. 18, 1988) and "Stochastic optics: A local realistic analysis of optical tests of Bell inequalities" (Phys. Rev. A 39, 1989), both with Marshall. From the mid-1990s the tool of choice becomes the positive Wigner function, with A. Casado, A. Fernández-Rueda and R. Risco-Delgado: parametric down-conversion in the Wigner representation (1997), fourth-order interference, dispersion cancellation and quantum-eraser experiments (1997), type-II down-conversion and entanglement (1998), and the spectrum and correlation time of down-converted radiation (2000–2001). The book chapters include "What is a Photon?" and, with Marshall, "The Myth of the Photon" (1997) — the claim being that a classical wave field plus zero-point noise plus a detection threshold reproduces the "particle-like" statistics attributed to photons.

Relativistic astrophysics (1998–2004)

A late and quite separate strand concerns stellar structure with anisotropic pressure: supermassive stars in post-Newtonian gravity (Class. Quant. Grav. 15, 1998), white dwarfs with anisotropic pressure (1998), and "Quantum approach to neutron stars leading to configurations with local anisotropy and mass above the Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit" (Astrophys. Space Sci. 275, 2001), together with "Quantum ground state of stars consisting of noninteracting fermions" (2002) and work on thermal equilibrium in general relativity.

Books

Three, all in Spanish and all from Spanish universities: Energía de formación de huecos en la red cristalina del grafito (Valladolid, 1962), Einstein: su vida y su obra (Cantabria, 1982), and Problemas conceptuales de la Física Cuántica (Cantabria, 1983).

Assessment

There is no argument here to assess and no arithmetic to check — the document is a list, and its internal counts are consistent with the abstract's summary of 120 articles, 3 books and 38 chapters. What can be assessed is what the list reveals.

Its most striking feature is the venues. Santos's dissenting work appears in Physical Review A and D, Physical Review Letters, Europhysics Letters, Journal of the Optical Society of America B and the American Journal of Physics, not only in the foundations journals. A paper titled "Does quantum mechanics violate the Bell inequalities?" in Phys. Rev. Lett. is a reminder that the boundary between "mainstream" and "dissident" physics is a good deal more porous than either side's rhetoric usually allows. It is also a reminder that Santos's objections were technical and answerable rather than merely sceptical — he published models with definite predictions, and proposed experiments capable of falsifying his own position.

The list also records, silently, the outcome of the debate. The detection loophole that Santos spent two decades pressing was closed for atoms by Rowe and colleagues in 2001 and for photons by Giustina and by Christensen in 2013; the locality and freedom-of-choice loopholes were closed simultaneously with detection in the 2015 experiments of Hensen, Giustina and Shalm, and in the 2018 Big Bell Test. Santos's own criterion — "the failure to perform a loophole-free test" — has since been met, and the results violate the inequalities. His 2004 paper is thus the last entry in a programme whose central empirical claim did not survive; but the programme was stated precisely enough to be settled, which is more than can be said of most objections to quantum mechanics.

Two cautions for anyone using this bibliography. First, its terminal date is 2004: Santos continued publishing well past it, including later work on gravitational and vacuum-fluctuation themes, so this is a snapshot, not a complete record. Second, the list is a Festschrift artefact and carries no abstracts, so the titles alone can mislead — "The Myth of the Photon", for instance, is not a denial that light is quantised in its interactions but a specific proposal that the quantisation lives in the detector rather than the field.

@@ Line 3: / Line 3: @@
 | url = [http://www.naturalphilosophy.org/pdf/abstracts/abstracts_863.pdf Link to paper]
 | author = [[Alwyn Van der Merwe]], [[Emilio C Santos]]
+| keywords = bibliography, local realism, Bell inequalities, stochastic electrodynamics, stochastic optics, Wigner function, zero-point field
 | published = 2006
 | journal = [[Foundations of Physics]]
@@ Line 16: / Line 17: @@
 This bibliography lists 120 technical publications, 3 books and 38 chapters or proceedings contributions over the carrer of a great and dedicated scientist.
+==Overview==
+This is not a research paper but the complete bibliography of the Spanish physicist [[Emilio C Santos|Emilio Santos Corchero]], printed in ''[[Foundations of Physics]]'' 36(4) in April 2006 as part of the Festschrift issue assembled in his honour by the journal's editor [[Alwyn Van der Merwe]]. The count given in the archive abstract is accurate: the list runs to 120 numbered technical articles (1963–2004), 3 books, and 38 chapters of books and conference proceedings.
+Its value on this wiki is as a map. Read straight through, it documents one of the most sustained programmes of principled dissent in twentieth-century quantum foundations — a physicist who spent four decades arguing, in mainstream journals and against the current, that the experiments claimed to refute local realism did not in fact do so, and who did the detailed optical calculations needed to make that case rather than merely asserting it. It also shows that this work ran in parallel with an entirely conventional and productive career in condensed-matter, nuclear and relativistic astrophysics.
+==What the list contains==
+===Early work: solid state and many-body theory (1963–1975)===
+Santos began under C. A. Coulson at Oxford, and the first entries are Thomas–Fermi and density-functional calculations on graphite: the formation energy of vacancies (''Proc. Roy. Soc.'' A 274, 1963), lattice deformation by interstitial carbon atoms and C<sub>2</sub> molecules, interlayer forces (''Phys. Rev.'' B 6, 1972), and later work with the Englert–Schwinger equation. Alongside these are papers on electron correlation energy, Hartree–Fock in the coordinate representation, and inhomogeneity corrections to the Thomas–Fermi theory of nuclei. This strand never stops entirely; graphite binding papers recur into 1990.
+===Stochastic electrodynamics and the zero-point field (1968–1990s)===
+The turn to foundations is dated by entry 7, "Is there an electromagnetic background radiation underlying the quantum phenomena?" (''An. Fís.'' 64, 1968). What follows is a systematic attempt to derive quantum behaviour from classical electrodynamics plus a real random [[Zero Point Energy|zero-point radiation]] field: "A Lagrangian formulation of the theory of random motion" (1969), "On the derivation of the Schrödinger equation from Newtonian mechanics" (1972), "Classical interpretation of the uncertainty relations" (1972), "The harmonic oscillator in stochastic electrodynamics" and "Foundations of stochastic electrodynamics" (both ''Nuovo Cimento'' B, 1974), and path-integral formulations with L. Pesquera.
+Two results in this vein are worth singling out because they engage the standard evidence directly. With R. Blanco and L. Pesquera, Santos published a two-part study (''Phys. Rev.'' D 27 and 29, 1983) deriving the Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution from a Rayleigh–Jeans spectrum for classical relativistic multiperiodic systems — an attack on the textbook claim that classical [[Blackbody Radiation|radiation–matter equilibrium]] necessarily gives the ultraviolet catastrophe. With Blanco and H. M. França he gave a classical account of the Debye law for the specific heat of solids (''Phys. Rev.'' A 43, 1991). There is also work on the [[Casimir Effect|Casimir]] interaction between a dipole oscillator and a solenoid, spontaneous emission in confined space, and "Zeropoint Radiation: Real or virtual?".
+===Local realism and the Bell inequalities (1983–2004)===
+This is the largest and most contentious block, running from 1983 to the end of the list, and much of it was done with [[Trevor W Marshall]], [[Franco Selleri]] and [[Miguel Ferrero]]. The opening salvo is "Local realism has not been refuted by atomic cascade experiments" (''Phys. Lett.'' 98A, 1983, with Marshall and Selleri), and the closing one, twenty-one years later, is "The failure to perform a loophole-free test of Bell's inequality supports local realism" (''Found. Phys.'' 34, 2004).
+The argument is not that [[Bell's Theorem|Bell's theorem]] is wrong but that the experiments testing it have all required auxiliary assumptions — chiefly fair sampling, given the low detection efficiencies of photon counters — and that explicit local models can be built which reproduce the data. The list contains those models: "Local realist model for the coincidence rates in atomic-cascade experiments" (1985), "Local realist photon model compatible with Malus's law" (1985), and the deliberately provocative "Does quantum mechanics violate the Bell inequalities?" (''Phys. Rev. Lett.'' 66, 1991) with its reply to comment. Related entries insist on the detection loophole quantitatively — "Relevance of detection efficiency in the optical tests of Bell inequalities" (1989), "Critical analysis of the empirical tests of local hidden-variables theories" (1992), "Unreliability of performed tests of Bell's inequality using parametric down-converted photons" (1996).
+Santos did not only object. A substantial group of entries ''proposes'' better tests: "Proposed atomic cascade experimental test of symmetric local hidden variables theories" (1987), "Atomic-cascade experiment with detection of the recoil atom" (1994), "Loophole-free test of the Bell inequality" (''Phys. Rev.'' A 51, 1995, with Huelga and Ferrero), "Proposed test for realist theories using Rydberg atoms coupled to a high-Q resonator" (1995), and "Proposed optical test of Bell's inequalities not resting upon the fair sampling assumption" (2004).
+===Stochastic optics and the Wigner representation===
+The technical machinery behind the local models is set out under the name '''stochastic optics''': "Stochastic optics: A reaffirmation of the wave nature of light" (''Found. Phys.'' 18, 1988) and "Stochastic optics: A local realistic analysis of optical tests of Bell inequalities" (''Phys. Rev.'' A 39, 1989), both with Marshall. From the mid-1990s the tool of choice becomes the positive Wigner function, with A. Casado, A. Fernández-Rueda and R. Risco-Delgado: parametric down-conversion in the Wigner representation (1997), fourth-order interference, dispersion cancellation and quantum-eraser experiments (1997), type-II down-conversion and [[Quantum Entanglement|entanglement]] (1998), and the spectrum and correlation time of down-converted radiation (2000–2001). The book chapters include "What is a Photon?" and, with Marshall, "The Myth of the Photon" (1997) — the claim being that a classical wave field plus zero-point noise plus a detection threshold reproduces the "particle-like" statistics attributed to [[Photon|photons]].
+===Relativistic astrophysics (1998–2004)===
+A late and quite separate strand concerns stellar structure with anisotropic pressure: supermassive stars in post-Newtonian gravity (''Class. Quant. Grav.'' 15, 1998), white dwarfs with anisotropic pressure (1998), and "Quantum approach to neutron stars leading to configurations with local anisotropy and mass above the Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit" (''Astrophys. Space Sci.'' 275, 2001), together with "Quantum ground state of stars consisting of noninteracting fermions" (2002) and work on thermal equilibrium in general relativity.
+===Books===
+Three, all in Spanish and all from Spanish universities: ''Energía de formación de huecos en la red cristalina del grafito'' (Valladolid, 1962), ''Einstein: su vida y su obra'' (Cantabria, 1982), and ''Problemas conceptuales de la Física Cuántica'' (Cantabria, 1983).
+==Assessment==
+There is no argument here to assess and no arithmetic to check — the document is a list, and its internal counts are consistent with the abstract's summary of 120 articles, 3 books and 38 chapters. What can be assessed is what the list reveals.
+Its most striking feature is the venues. Santos's dissenting work appears in ''Physical Review A'' and ''D'', ''Physical Review Letters'', ''Europhysics Letters'', ''Journal of the Optical Society of America B'' and the ''American Journal of Physics'', not only in the foundations journals. A paper titled "Does quantum mechanics violate the Bell inequalities?" in ''Phys. Rev. Lett.'' is a reminder that the boundary between "mainstream" and "dissident" physics is a good deal more porous than either side's rhetoric usually allows. It is also a reminder that Santos's objections were technical and answerable rather than merely sceptical — he published models with definite predictions, and proposed experiments capable of falsifying his own position.
+The list also records, silently, the outcome of the debate. The detection loophole that Santos spent two decades pressing was closed for atoms by Rowe and colleagues in 2001 and for photons by Giustina and by Christensen in 2013; the locality and freedom-of-choice loopholes were closed simultaneously with detection in the 2015 experiments of Hensen, Giustina and Shalm, and in the 2018 Big Bell Test. Santos's own criterion — "the failure to perform a loophole-free test" — has since been met, and the results violate the inequalities. His 2004 paper is thus the last entry in a programme whose central empirical claim did not survive; but the programme was stated precisely enough to be settled, which is more than can be said of most objections to quantum mechanics.
+Two cautions for anyone using this bibliography. First, its terminal date is 2004: Santos continued publishing well past it, including later work on gravitational and vacuum-fluctuation themes, so this is a snapshot, not a complete record. Second, the list is a Festschrift artefact and carries no abstracts, so the titles alone can mislead — "The Myth of the Photon", for instance, is not a denial that light is quantised in its interactions but a specific proposal that the quantisation lives in the detector rather than the field.
+==See also==
+* [[Emilio C Santos]]
+* [[Alwyn Van der Merwe]]
+* [[Trevor W Marshall]]
+* [[Franco Selleri]]
+* [[Miguel Ferrero]]
+* [[Bell's Theorem]]
+* [[EPR Paradox]]
+* [[Quantum Entanglement]]
+* [[Zero Point Energy]]
+* [[Casimir Effect]]
+* [[Blackbody Radiation]]
+* [[Photon]]
+* [[Foundations of Physics]]
 [[Category:Scientific Paper|publications emilio santos]]
+[[Category:Quantum Theory|publications emilio santos]]
+[[Category:Philosophy of Science|publications emilio santos]]