Three letters only
Letter ##1: 25 february 2004
On Wed February 25 Giovanni Gallavotti wrote:

Dear Dr. Rondoni,

I write to ask you to quote correctly the results on which your critiques rests. You identify eq. (2), which we never wrote, with our main result. This is done in many places starting with p. 6. I have already pointed out that our result requires |p| > 0.

That is not in eq. (2) and therefore the latter cannot be identified with our Fluctuation Theorem (a name that, in spite of my disagreement, you adopt for your work causing a persistent confusion between our result and results of others).

Necessity of the conditions >0 and |p|
If |p| is so large to be impossible (because it is bounded), the relation (6) becomes 0/0 and any interpretation is possible (including a correct one). In the reference there is also indication of how to compute p^* (which is quite non trivial).

Should you decide to quote correctly our results I think that you should point out that the condition
|p| less than p^* less than infinity and average sigma > 0 is an essential element of our work and, hence, give up identifying our work with eq. (2). This would make clear that eq (2) is not equivalent to our result (contrary to several your assertions). Otherwise please let me know why you insist in attributing to us a result which we did not claim.

Could you please also explain why your earlier paper no longer appears as withdrawn from the archives and the new one is in its place with the same number hence date (15 dec 2003) and no mention of the replacement? I would not know how to do that. My replaced papers are marked as such even if replaced after one day.

Sincerely: GGallavotti

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Letter ##2: On Thu February 26 2004 11:55 am, you wrote:

Dear Giovanni,

you are absolutely right to insist that it should be clear that eq.(2) is not the GCFT, since equation (2) IS NOT the GCFT. I thought that this was clear in this version of our paper, but if it is not, the relavant parts of the paper will have to be changed.

Given the time difference, I cannot get a hold of all my co-authors now, but I suppose that what I am going to tell you will be more or or less fine also with them.

The main issue is how to refer to eq.(2).

We could simply call it "equation (2)", but we did not do so because it seems important to mention in which context this equation has been derived. We thought that calling it the fluctuation relation (FR) of the GCFT would make clear that one thing is eq.(2) and another thing is the GCFT (which holds under the conditions that you mention in your e-mail). That these conditions should be satisfied is explained in sections 2 and 4. Therefore, our expression "FR of the GCFT" should have given you the credit that you deserve, without confusing equation (2) with the GCFT. This is the motiviation which led us to our expression "FR of the GCFT".

At the moment I do not see a better concise way of disitinguishing eq.(2) from the GCFT. I will think about this problem, and discuss it with my co-authors, but if you already have some idea on what to do, we will appreciate that you share this idea with us. In any event, be sure that we will do our best to remove the ambiguity between eq.(2) and the GCFT.

Other points of your letter:

1. Sorry about ref.30 of our ref.4. We will include it in a revised version of our paper;

2. How could we get a replacement of our old paper, preserving the date? I really don't know, I will ask Debra.

Thank you very much for comments and best regards

Lamberto

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Letter ##3: From giovanni.gallavotti@roma1.infn.it Thu Feb 26 17:16:06 2004

Dear Dr. Rondoni

thank you for acknowledging on the necessity of what seems to me one more really major correction. I had just finished a list of detailed comments to your version 3 and I was about to post it on the same archive.

This followed my earlier list of comments on version 1 (which I kept for me as you said you had withdrawn the paper). However I cannot keep thinking to the newer and newer versions of your work, simply for lack of time. Therefore I wait a few days for the version 4 to appear on the archive and then I will proceed publishing my comments. I will send you the registration number.

With the present letter I consider that our correspondence is over. Thank you for entertaining it. However should you decide not to modify the paper any more please inform me by a brief message so that I can publish my comments as they are now.

Sincerely: Giovanni Gallavotti

ps: about the archive I asked directly information on how to do to avoid withdrawings and replacements to be mentioned. The answer is: they cannot. If one looks at the abstract one finds the list and the texts of all replacements including dates (so I discovered that you had already replaced once the paper without informing me, before temporarily withdrawing it; a quite incorrect action in my opinion).