Opinion - News Analysis   

Physicist Sudarshan's omission questioned

R. Ramachandran

"Miscarriage of justice," say 10 scientists in appeal to Nobel Committee.

TEN SCIENTISTS on Saturday sent an appeal to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on the wrongful omission of the Indian physicist E.C.G. Sudarshan, a professor at the University of Texas, Austin, United States, from this year's Nobel award in physics. With this, the controversy that arose soon after the announcement of the award on October 4 has gained further impetus.

The Swedish Academy, following Alfred Nobel's will of 1896, is the organisation that is responsible for the selections of the Nobel Prize in physics and chemistry.

One half of the 2005 Nobel Prize in physics went to Roy. J. Glauber of Harvard University "for the contribution to the quantum theory of optical coherence." It has been widely felt that the Nobel Committee had ignored the important contribution of Prof. Sudarshan who justly deserved to share the coveted award.

"We, the undersigned," says the representation, "humbly submit that the decision to single out one individual for this contribution is most unfortunate ... [W]e express our deep regret in having to communicate to the Academy our fear that there has been a grave miscarriage of justice in overlooking the fundamental contributions of E.C.G. Sudarshan to the theory of quantum optics. Indeed, it is difficult to understand how the work, for which Glauber is cited, could be honoured in isolation from Sudarshan's published discoveries and formulations, which were initially criticised and subsequently adopted by Glauber. With all due respect, we feel compelled to bring to the kind notice of the Academy this anomalous situation... "

The letter is the result of the initiative of Ranjit Nair, director of the Centre for Philosophy and Foundation, New Delhi, which has been signed by the following Indian and foreign scientists: Virendra Singh, C.V. Raman Professor and former director of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai; Babu Joseph, a well known theoretical physicist and former vice-chancellor of Cochin University of Science and Technology, Kochi; N. Mukunda of the Centre for High Energy Physics, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore; R. Simon of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai; T. Padmanabhan of the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune; Daksh Lohiya of the department of physics and astrophysics, University of Delhi; Anil Shaji and Todd Tilma, physicists and former students of Prof. Sudarshan from the University of Texas, Austin; and Herman Matthews, a former physicist from the University of Texas, Austin.

Correct formulation

The correct formulation of the quantum mechanical treatment of optics, the letter notes, was laid out by Prof. Sudarshan in 1963 by introducing what is called the `diagonal representation' and demonstrating that every state of light can be represented in this diagonal form. This representation, as Prof. Sudarshan showed, was valid for all light fields, classical as well as quantum. This formulation has, in fact, subsequently formed the basis for all subsequent developments in quantum optics.

Dr. Glauber's paper, which preceded Prof. Sudarshan's by a couple of months and for which he gets the Nobel Prize, actually gave only the non-diagonal form, and the formulation was valid only for a statistical mixture of incoherent states.

Indeed, in his later work, Dr. Glauber had criticised Prof. Sudarshan's formulation but, as the letter points out, he introduced "as a deus ex machina, the very representation he abjures."

Dr. Glauber, in fact, gave it a new name, the P-representation, as if he had discovered it but went on to make inaccurate assertions as well. He had claimed that the P-representation was valid only in the limit of high intensity whereas Prof. Sudarshan's diagonal representation is, in fact, valid for all fields, whether of low, high or intermediate intensity.

"It is ironic," says the letter, "that despite the ready availability in cold print of these facts, the diagonal representation introduced by Sudarshan, which by rights ought to be referred to as the Sudarshan representation, is dubbed as either the P-representation or at best as the `Glauber-Sudarshan' representation as in the Academy's announcement of the Nobel Prize."

"While the suggestion that coherent states, introduced by Erwin Schroedinger in 1926, ought to be used to describe optical fields can plausibly be credited to Glauber, the task of using them to describe `all' optical fields (of all intensities) through the correct diagonal representation is certainly the work of Sudarshan," the letter points out. "Far from being just a mathematical formalism," notes the letter, "Sudarshan's work laid out the basic theory underlying all optical fields."

Prof. Sudarshan, along with J. R. Klauder and C. L. Mehta, had put the (diagonal representation) formalism on a sound mathematical footing. All quantum features are contained in the diagonal representation. It describes the intense laser fields, on the one hand, and the special quantum states such as `squeezed states', on the other.

"Sudarshan's diagonal representation is not useful solely for the `approach to classical physics' as the Academy seems to think in apparent expiation for its exclusion of its author," says the letter. Noting that an egregious error has been committed in the Nobel citation, the letter urges, "Under the circumstances, friends and well-wishers of the Academy would be failing in their duty if they did not earnestly implore the august body to make amends, at the very least by revising the citation so that historical record is accurately upheld. It is not for us to contest the decisions of the Academy; our plaint is that credit be given where it is due."

It is interesting that as far back as in 1973, Prof. Sudarshan — obviously disillusioned by not getting the due credit for his weak interaction theory and faster-than-light particle hypothesis — had perceived that credit for his discovery of the diagonal representation would be denied as well. In a lecture in September 1973 at the IISc, titled "In Search of Perspective: An Attempt at Self-Assessment," Prof. Sudarshan, speaking about this work, had said: "And here too I see evidence that international science is not a monarchy nor a democracy; rather, it is reminiscent of a more primitive social organisation of the era of robber barons."

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Focus on relief, rehabilitation
Passing clouds over FTAA?
Vidharbha: cry, the beloved countryside
Confessions of an ageing guerrilla
Physicist Sudarshan's omission questioned
Britons should avoid "free" and "democratic" Iraq
Uma Bharti & BJP
Jobless?
Science and God
BCCI matters

Copyright © 2005, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu