Negative group delay and Zero Energy Ontology

Paul Kirsch sent an interesting link to a finding to an article "Experimental evidence that a photon can spend a negative amount of time in an atom cloud" (see this).

The finding is very interesting from from the point of view of zero energy ontology (ZEO) defining the ontology of classical and quantum TGD (see this, this, this, this). Could the negative group delay be understood in terms of a time period with a reversed arrow of time spent by the photon around an atom?

1. Absorption and re-emission by atom would correspond to two types of "big" state function reductions (BSFRs) taking place. In the first BSFR photon would "die" by absorption by an atom. Photon would however reincarnate with an opposite arrow of time. The same would happen in the second BSFRs and photon would reincrane with the original arrow of time.

   According to the recent view of ZEO, after the second BSFR the photon would emerge geometrically later than it was absorbed in the first BSFR. The photon wave packet would come out as less entropic, that is younger. This effect would be like waking up as a less entropic, in this sense a younger person after a well slept night.

2. Does the group delay measure this effect? If the aging of the wave packet means widening then this might be the case. Free photon wave packet keeps its shape since it does not disperse. The widening must be of thermodynamic origin and would be due to SSFRs replacing the wave packet gradually with a wider one.
3. In TGD, the shape preserving wave packet has as a classical geometric correlates a "massless extremal" (ME) representing a pulse propagating in a precise direction. The shape of pulse does not change but "small" state function reductions (SSFRs) would replace ME with a new one representing in general a wider pulse. This would be dissipation: ME would age. The pair of BSFRs induced by atomic absorption would lead to a reincarnation as a younger ME. This would be the counterpart for the group delay.

The finding creates a tongue in cheek consideration related to my personal life. I suffer from bad sleep and wake-up continually. BSFR means falling asleep or in an extreme case death at some level of the personal self hierarchy. Temporary reversals of the arrow of time in pairs of BSFRs would provide a universal trial and error mechanism in conscious information processing and quantum biology. For instance, homeostasis as a way to stay near quantum criticality would be based on continual change of the arrow of time. If the temporary deaths indeed provide a way to fight against the second law, they might slow down aging. The personal curse would be actually a blessing?

See the article TGD and Condensed Matter or a chapter with the same title.

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

For the lists of articles (most of them published in journals founded by Huping Hu) and books about TGD see this.