Posted in 2010
The Protection of the Mother of God
feast has come today. I have already explained in the blog the origin and significance of this feast.
First half of the month and especially this week was not without joyful and inspiring events. However, this period was also full with bizzare incidents that have been unexpected, unpleasant and even painful. I feel unsure and do not look forward to the future.
O Mother, protect me, my kin and kith from any evil and temptation. And if unpleasant things happen, protect our souls from wounds Evil tries to inflict.
Visit Goteborg
I’m writting in a rather reversed chronological order, since I’ve been to Goteborg (correct English name would be Gothenburg) already more than two weeks ago. Yet it was a wonderful visit organized by Vitaly Shumeiko, and I ought to mention it.
Goteborg houses many nanoscientists, much more than Delft. Formally they are separated into Goteborg University and Chalmers Technical University, yet people from these different organizations sometimes even share offices. Owing to geographical proximity of former Soviet Union and rather harsh climate, an appreciable fraction of nanophysisists speaks Russian. Two of Goteborg faculty are my close university fellows: we graduated in 1982 from the same study-group of 18 people (where – guess now I have to mention it all the time – Andre Geim belonged as well). Know very well the most of Swedish-speaking elder faculty. However, despite many connections to the place, I have not been to Goteborg for 18 years.
Main events took place on Sept. 24. In the morning, I met Yari Kinaret: those were hours of nanomechanics. He introduced a bunch of students – of him, Leonid Gorelik and Robert Shekhter – and who did not have time and had to talk fast. In two hours I’ve heard more new nano- and micromechanical ideas than in two previous years. Leonid Kuzmin, with whom I worked in Moscow University many years ago, shared with me his ideas – some were more like dreams – about superconducting bolometers. He’s also shown interesting preliminary measurements of highly resistive superconducting forks. After lunch I met Per Delsing and Chris Wilson who do quantum optics with microwaves – and do it with zeal and style. They, Tsukuba gang and several other groups are active in microwave artificial atoms. Next was Serge Kubatkin, he was pioneered graphene on SiC substrate and has shown me astonishing Quantum Hall plateaus. Vitaly Shumeiko, fellow theorist, told about his work on Andreev dots under irradiation: a topic Ciprian and me will tackle soon.
To complete the (scientific) joy of the day, I was invited to a warm party and exclusive diner in Leonid Gorelik’s place. Officially we cannot talk about science at the party: yet me and Leonid went out for a smoke and there we discussed a bit of nanomechanics.
Eliashberg 80
One of the reasons to visit Russia was the fact that my supervisor, Gerasim Matveevitch (Sima) Eliashberg has turned 80 years old this year. Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics has organized a three-day conference to honour him and Vsevolod Gantmacher (75), and I was invited. Teun Klapwijk also got there, to commemorate the fact that one of his first experiments was to confirm an effect predicted by Eliashberg. Wonder if Teun could fully enjoy the talks: it appeared unexpectedly that the working language of the conference is Russian…
Prof. Eliashberg is still active and kicking. He attended all the talks. Once upon time, he has provided a great support to BCS theory of superconductivity by extending their approach to more realistic “strong coupling” case. He has also pioneered the use of random matrices in condensed matter physics, among other things. I greatly appreciate him teaching me. The point is that in my diploma thesis-PhD times I was rather unconventional younster. If I had a teacher of lesser patience and readiness to listen to baby-talk, I would never ever become a physicist. Well, by that time I thought that having such a supervisor is quite usual. Since that I met thousands of physisists, quick and deep, bright and active, but till now I haven’t met anybody who was as kind and noble as Eliashberg.
Long live Eliashberg.
Farewell to Moscow
I was not born in Moscow. Yet I have been living there and in the neighbourhood for 15 years, for most active part of my life. This is a city where I met my wife, get first son, first job, and my educational diploma. The city where I loved and was being formed.
This is why the city had a strange mastery over me. Despite the fact that I left, despite the fact that the city and me have changed almost beyond recognition. Very soon after my departure I’ve lost affiliation with people of the city except a handful of good friends. However, the city proper constantly attracted me, luring into a magic network of its side-streets and get-through-yards, inciting good and bad memories, keeping me on line of nostalgia of times past and things eternal.
Today I’m getting home after 10-day visit to Moscow and Chernogolovka. There were intensive lecturing, long and fruitful discussions with local scientists, attending talks. There were tributes to nostalgia, visiting places almost forgotten. There were unusual events and interactions, both pleasant and unpleasant, like being disturbed all night long by drunken Dutch youngsters.
One of the unexpected consequences of this visit is that the city has lost his power over me, or perhaps just decided to prune its subjects by expelling me from its magic circle. I have understood that I don’t belong to it anymore. Moreover, I have recognized a simple and smashing fact: I never actually did. It was all a kind of delusion coming from desire to belong somewhere, to have roots and nostalgic memories. Like a stray dog sometimes fancies to follow a passer-by imagining it has a master.
Therefore: farewell to you, Moscow, ugly and beautiful, holy and blasphemous, capital of unjust power and undeserved mercy, you have my soul not. Most likely, I will come along once again: but it will be my turn to be a passer-by.
Andre Geim
and Kostya Novoselov have won Nobel prize on Oct. 5, 2010. That you undoubtedly know: what can I add to it?
First of all, I share alma mater: Fiztekh, Moscow Physical-Technical University, with the winners. This is an establishment that prendended to be excellent and even exclusive during Cold-War era, and honestly tried to achive this. Despite Nobel-stamped quality of their research, Andre and Kostya are typical fiztekhi, Fiztekh graduates, and their win is our win as well.
By chance, on the same Oct. 5 I came to Fiztekh after 25 years of being away. My goal was to deliver a lecture to younger generation: they are interested in nanoscience. I will perhaps describe the lecture in a separate post. Anyway Andre and Kostya have provided an excellent introducton for this lecture.
And personally I know Andre pretty well always being delighted with his creativity, assertiveness and humour. I hope that the prize won’t be a signal for him to cease his constant quest for novel things, and next to levitating frog, gekko tape and graphene he will come up with new sensational discoveries.
Thanks for 512,000 views!
that gives me opportunity to report another doubling. It took about 7 month to achieve this, which means that the number of daily views has stabilized. I also got quite a bit lazy with writting new posts: perhaps being up-to-date would attract more readers.
But I’m happy anyway: thank you very much.
Jens Michelsen
has obtained his PhD degree on September 23 in Goteborg. His promotor was Vitaly Shumeiko, and I was appointed as a faculty opponent.
This means I had to work, and, on Dutch standards, had to do work of six: the dramatic part of the defence has lasted the same hour as in the Netherlands while I was alone to question the candidate. Jens has answered very good all complicated theory questions, and me and the audience were impressed. His thesis addresses dynamics of Andreev states.
Jens has spent 10 years studying in Goteborg and will soon depart to Karsruhe for the postdoc with Gerd Schoen, something that I also did many years ago. Best luck, Jens, I am sure I will hear more of your scientific achievements.
Thomas Picot
has obtained his PhD degreee on September 22 in Delft. Hans Mooij and Kees Harmans were the promotors.
Upon his arrival in Delft, Thomas has impressed me with his strange views on quantum detection. By “strange” I do not imply “incorrect” or “unconventional”, just “strange”. The impression was so strong as to motivate me for a research project on qubit detection. The project is accomplished but still waits for a write-up, already for years.
Meanwhile Thomas has been working on practical quantum detection. His views have become less strange as to judge from the thesis, the achievements have multiplied. The committee members were most impressed by the revival of swithiching detector Thomas made.
During the defence, we’ve discussed his proposition about working on character, and he’s impressed me once again with razor-sharp definions of the subject.
Nativity of the Mother of God
Yesterday there was a feast of Nativity of the Mother of God. I have already explain in this blog about a year ago about the feast and its personal significance for me and my family. This year I meet the feast in the state of a certain distress and as I formulated it recently, “busy inactivity”. I hope the Mother will forgive me the lack of concentration and will not cease protecting me and my folk.
Yesterday we did remembrance of my father who would turn 75 today and have passed away almost 35 years ago. Funny enough, 75 does not seem a big age for me anymore. I even think if I have enough time to meet my 75…
Giant current fluctuations
in an overheated single electron transistor is a study which I’ve done with Matti Laakso and Tero Heikkila from Helsinki. The highlight of the research is that the distribution of the current may become a power-law, that makes it quite distinct from usual distributions.
Power-law distributions are rare in physics. It is third time in my life I encounter one. First time it was yet at university. I’ve read and memorized that the distribution of radiative losses by a fast charged particle in a media has a power-law tail. That formally renders the radiative losses unmeasurable (control question: explain why). With this piece of knowledge, I’ve managed to pass an examination I was totally unprepared for. Was a fun to use the trick once again.
See the article at
http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.3400