Posted in 2011
Pentecost 2011
Your way, O God, is holy.
What god is great like our God?
You are the God whoworks wonders;
you have made known your might among the peoples.
You with your arm redeemed your people,
the children of Jacob and Joseph.
This (Psalm 77) has been sung today. Looks I’ve been waiting for this message. Troubles, big and small, that hem me in, are just delusions: He will free me and save me. If I don’t see the way to deal with my woes, He’ll give the way and the means. If I’m dismayed, He’ll confort me.
Conference in Mallorca,
that’s where I’ve been sunday-thusday this week. Rosa Lopez and David Sanchez, faculties of University of Balearic islands, were so kind as to organize it, “Nonlinear spin and charge transport through nanoscopic systems” was the name, many thanks for this. Funniest thing is that we all actually work from 8 till 17, while the weather was nice almost all the time.
Things I liked included:
- the direction of the conference: it beared non-linear stochastic dynamics flavour, the taste that becomes stronger and stronger in quantum transort research
- talks, especially related to electron counting/pumping
- food, and very much
- swimming at a public beach in 1km from the hotel
- a spectacular night thunderstorm in Hollywood style
Things I liked less were:
- the conference mascot was a little red horny devil
- the fact the island seems totally covered by the city
- waking up at 2 a.m to catch the flight there
- going to bed at 4 a.m. after the flight there
Ascension 2011
or Hemelvart, how it’s bluntly called in this country, took place today. So Pascha is over. There’s again a period of confusion imposed on earthy confusions of different kinds…
Therefore I long for certainty and joy instead of experiencing those. I suspect there is a simple way out this state, but it’s perhaps to simple to find.
Let’s wait for Pentecost: the Lord will show me the ways.
Wedding in Leiden
(Posting back in time)
Frans Goldschalk, my phd student, and Denise have married today. What a perfect young couple they stroke! Having seen all these academics who do not marry before finding a “proper place” in social structure, I really admire their decision and wish them very best luck and Lord’s blessing in all the ways.
Me and my wife been to the service and marrige blessing in neat Herengrachtkerk in Leiden. Very good, detailed, everything was carefully explained. The church appreared a bit far from the station, and for the party we had to make that walk back so we did not stay long.
Getting sick of being busy
(Posting back again)
I can’t believe that: the semester, that was so difficult, time-consuming and seemingly everlasting, is over, but instead of rejoycing I am confronted with a heap of things that I’ve wisely postponed till the end of the semester. Like seven referee reports (with the deadline end of the week). Like preparing talks and promises to review the texts of articles I involed, checking calculations, thinking of running projects…
Unfair it is. Why a prominent scientist like me could not spend time in leisure, playing with thoughts about things eternal? Recall I was able to do it in a younger age. Will have to think about post doc position…
Twelfth Lecture Advanced Statistical Mechanics
Finally, finally! We did the renormalization, and try to make sense of it with four examples taking from various places of Kardar: gaussian model, 1d Ising, Midgal-Kadanoff, 4 – epsilon. The lecture was highly technical, but the audience was kind enough to persist: I felt glad, and, after all, had a good feeling.
The lecture was at unusual time of monday morning, yet there were more people than expected. I provoked this by a promise to tell more about the examination: and, indeed, many appear to be interested in this information.
Concluding Lecture Fairy Tales
We theorists of our section have started a new course this year, Fairy Tales of Theoretical Physics. That has been inspired by the course of Khmelnitskii in Cambridge, and we made use of his material. To aim at Delft audience, we have to adjust the manner and content, so now it differs substantially: this is both good and bad. We were lucky to attract a group of enthousiastc students, eventually, bigger group that we initially expected.
I gave this concluding lecture. I wanted to show up a bit, the lecture beared the title “Yours Classically Quantum” and discused analogies between quantum d-dimensional systems and classical (d+1)-dimensional ones, mostly for d=0. I find this topic very instructive for a student, and perhaps it implicitly answers the question: “what is the theoretical physics?”.
While I think I could partially convey the message, and made a couple of instructive jokes, the technicalities and/or their presentation manner were perhaps too difficult for the audience. Yaroslav Blanter that was present pretended it was difficult for him as well, though I rather see it as his attempt for an instructive joke. I’ll need to revise the presentation manner for the next year. And there was this annoying time problem again…
Eleventh Lecture Advanced Statistical Mechanics
(posting back again)
was devoted to scaling hypothesis and introduction to the concept of renormalization group. I have had a rather popular introduction with fractal pictures and that was a certain sucsess (modern student seems to know everything about fractal and chaos without getting any lectures on the subject). Making the lecture was an interesting task since I did not take to the stuff since my phd years. I guess I did not depart much from the Kardar, and yet the lecture made sense: much progress:)
Twelfth Lecture Quantum Transport
dissipation, decoherence, dephasing, relaxation… Indeed, the relaxation after the last lecture is what I seem to deserve…
It’s a good reach-context topic: we’ve been taking about very simple classical physics and saw its manifestations deep in quantum mechanics, there was a place for Schimd transition from decoherence point of view and some experiments. I enjoyed giving the lecture, and, again it seems I enjoyed too much. Again the time problem: talk too much about elementaries in the beginning, did not have time to go into details in the end.
I’d like to do something next year that would spare me, perhaps I need to skip a topic or two. I also shall try to re-new the experimental part.
Tenth Lecture Advanced Statistical Mechanics
(posting back again)
was devoted to fluctuations. I’ve started with critical opalescence, discussed Gaussian model, relation to susceptibility, quantum fluctuations, and then fluctuations near critical point: Goldstone and upper critical dimension.
Quantum fluctuations would have to be done better: I must think how to do this next time. The rest of material went affordable, and I did not have a noticeable time problem. Also I got more positive signals from the audience. My hope is rising: perhaps I finally manage to finish this course.