Posts in category Organization
Quantum Noise and Measurement in Engineered Electronic Systems
This workshop is about to be officially announced, look here. Below is the announcement:)
Quantum Noise and Measurement in Engineered Electronic Systems
International Workshop – 8 – 12 October 2012
Scientific Coordinators:
Wolfgang Belzig (Universität Konstanz, Germany)
Michel Devoret (Yale University, USA)
Yuli V. Nazarov (TU Delft, The Netherlands)
Organisation:
Katrin Lantsch (Max-Planck-Institut für Physik komplexer Systeme Dresden, Germany)
Supported by the SFB 767 "Controlled Nanosystems" 
The aim to manipulate, control, and measure electronic devices at the single quantum level has shaped the last decade in mesocopic physics. The measurement procedure itself, as well as the effect of a dissipative environment, are intrinsically quantum in these systems, which poses a challenge to experimentalists as well as theorists. These problems are common for the full counting statistics of electrons passing in a nanodevice, fluctuations and amplification in quantum-limited complex circuits, and the next-generation qubit schemes. The workshop strives to achieve the synergy of these research fields at the level of theory and experiment.
The list of invited speakers includes:
T. Brandes (Berlin, Germany), M. Büttiker (Geneva, Switzerland), A. Clerk (Montreal, Canada), L. DiCarlo (Delft, The Netherlands), K. Ensslin (Zürich, Switzerland), D. Esteve (Gif-sur-Yvette, France), Y. Gefen (Rehovot, Israel), S. Girvin(New Haven, USA), D.C. Glattli (Gif-sur-Yvette, France), M. Heiblum (Rehovot, Israel), T. Kippenberg (Lausanne, Switzerland), J. König (Duisburg, Germany), T. Kontos (Paris, France), G.B. Lesovik (Moscow, Russia), L. Levitov(Cambridge, USA), F. Marquardt (Erlangen, Germany), T. Martin (Marseille, France), K. Mølmer (Aarhus, Denmark),J. Pekola (Aalto, Finland), B. Reulet (Sherbrooke, Canada), R. Schoelkopf (New Haven, USA), G. Schön (Karlsruhe, Germany), C. Schönenberger (Basel, Switzerland), I. Siddiqi (Berkeley, USA), J. van Ruitenbeek (Leiden, The Netherlands), F. von Oppen (Berlin, Germany), A. Wallraff (Zürich, Switzerland)
Applications for participation and poster or oral contributions are welcome and should be made by using the application form on the workshop’s web page. The number of attendees is limited. The registration fee for the workshop is 120 EUR and should be paid by all participants. Costs for accommodation and meals will be covered by the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems. Limited funding is available to partially cover travel expenses. Please note that childcare is available upon request.
Applications received before 31 July 2012 are considered preferentially.
For further information please e-mail to:
qnm12
pks.mpg.de
Thanks for 1 MB views!
So I am pleased to report another doubling of number of views. It took 531 day to achieve this. Thank you very much, dear reader, for sticking to this blog despite all the variety you can find elsewhere. This is motivating. I am happy with this.
Microkelvin 2012
I’m now in Slovakia attending a meeting of European MicroKelvin Collaboration, large network of low-temperature groups. I do not participate in the network and got invited because my temperature fluctuation exercises that, rather unexpectedly, get along with a burst of interest in non-equilibrium thermodynamics of small systems. In comparison with a generic conference, the talks over here are more serious and provide (interesting) technical details: people speak to equally knowlegeable colleagues and expect a usefull feedback. I enjoy this, although frequently it is tough to follow.
My dean, my department head and me (2012)
came together for an evaluation meeting. I like so much to compare such meetings with a dental check. The densists are there to find holes in your performance and sometimes are trying to provide an on-spot treatment.
Since I have just recently came to a glorious status of the group leader, my performance in two related aspects was automatically set to a default low value to provide me with more motivation. Anyway, they did not want to sack me right away and we have made several useful appointments.
The dentist was joking
The story of yesterday had a happy end after all: my computer was pronounced clean, and I was admitted to internet. Perhaps I was overreacting as usual. I am sorry. Anyway you recognize I’m afraid of dentists…
Rootkit: what’s rotten?
Today I was deprived from the biggest and most fundamental priveledge of modern man: internet at working place. Another click lead me to an internal TU Delft web page which stated that my computer was infected with a deadly virus and has been quarantined indefinitely, at least till I clear it up and produce convincing proof that it has been indeed cleared. This given the fact that the TU computer administration runs a real-lime virus protection program at my computer, prophetically called F*-secure, that I cannot stop, that swallows 30 % of CPU power and has so far found two adwares for time period of four years.
So the day was ruined. Thinking back, there was something on Friday afternoon that could justify the warning. My comp has been doing strange things. I had to opt for an inspection where I’ve found a trojan and removed it with SpyBot. Was not the fist time for these years.
So today I’ve checked all over again, produce clean scan reports and submitted to the authorities hoping to have internet again. Guess what? I was kindly proposed to have my hard drives wiped and sys reinstalled… Looks like it was the only TU Delft ICT solution to supposingly identified rootkits.
Imagine a dentist who works as follows. He hears from an informer about your light tooth pain. He lures you to his practice, locks you in his working room and suggests you to solve the problem yourself. Since he is very insisting, you do your best and upon his return proudly demonstrate an unrooted bloody tooth. No, he doubts your pain is over. He produces a machete to chop your head off.
I wish to be wrong, yet so far I am not able to provide a better description of TU Delft ICT services.
Electronic Agenda Madness
Do not write much to the blog during January: a sign of “busy inactivity” state where activities are directed to things not needed and accomlishments remain to be completed. A part of non-needed activities was devoted to sweet art of scheduling.
While I has been dreaming of writting regular daily notes and making things done in a scheduled way since my early childhood, I did prefer the dreams to reality for most of my life. It is a slow intellectual degradation that came with age that lead me to an important discovery: the scheduling itself is an occupation worth the time spend, the occupation a way more pleasant and rewarding than the occupations to be scheduled. It gives a thrill of knowing and mastering the future, living life on full thrust, and immediate sense of accomplishment. It is about four years that I got mad about electronic agendas.
I’ve tried out several dozens of various PIM software titles that left me unsatisfied for one or another reason, mostly reason of taste. Most soft treats you as an idiot not able to customize the prog neither aware of advantages of such customization. They would suit if you are in jail, or feel like being there. Few softs really offering customization do offer too much of it, you tend to constanly change the colors of your appointments and end up missing them all. I was only satisfied with a wiki-style prog that I made functional with a dozen of home-brewed python scripts.
The crisis came when standart electronic agendas become wide-spread to the degree of being compulsory. It is already a year I feel a pressure to use TU central agenda, to synchronize my activities with those of society. I decided to give up this month. It gave me a head-ache of solving the compatibility problems between my custom things and — could not belive this — Microsoft Outlook. I have solved them today, it was interesting and gave me some programming fun, yet what a waist of time…
that could be devoted to proper scheduling.
Old and new
All right, it’s almost time, time to think of good and bad, achievements and losses, old and new, whatever silly it is.
My Lord kept me and keen reasonably healthy and active. Kids gladden my heart. I could enjoy love and friendship. As to research, six papers have been published, two in PRL. We have made 11 arxiv submissions. I got 475 citations this year reaching h-index of 47. I’m happy I could work on Renyi entropies and hope to continue with this, we cracked the polaron in carbon nanotube. I’ve learned about several interesting experiments to think of and had a couple of prospective ideas. I made into several very good grant application teams, this schould work over a time. I collaborated with visitors, Izak Snyman and Tomohiro Yokoyama.
On negative side, my laziness and lack of feeling for my neighbour yet prevail. I could not finish papers I would have to, no grant application was sucsessful, many things planned have been smoothly transferred to next year plans. One of my best scienific achivements has not been sufficiently appreciated. The “weather” for research becomes increasingly bad: less and less money for real science. And overall “wheather” might be better, with all signs of economical and political instability appearing as ugly blotches at the made-up face of our prosperous civilization, that accompany signs of moral degradation and devotion to sin.
And my own aging, on the top of all. Less people smile at my jokes and understand my motives. Less news in my life, all runs along the trajectories known, and to my astonishment I even do not get bored with this…
Challengies for next year. I have to finish the book with Jeroen, and pretty soon. I need to learn how to run the group, and actually why. And grant applications, articles, students finishing, students (hopefully) coming… I just do not want to be boring, you know.
Phenomenology and Dynamics of Majorana Josephson Junction
is a title of new submission we made with Dima Pikulin. Interesting and simple dymanical effect in a Josephson qubit that we called any-pi Josephson effect. Please find it here.
The abstract is as follows:We derive a generic phenomenological model of a Majorana Josephson junction that accounts for avoided crossing of Andreev states, and investigate its dynamics at constant bias voltage to reveal an unexpected pattern of any-pi Josephson effect in the limit of slow decoherence.
The Effect of Mechanical Resonance on Josephson Dynamics
is a title of new arxiv submission made with Ciprian and Han Keijzers, PhD student from Quantum Transport group. This summarizes our long activity in course of which we strove to be close to experiment and the experiment strove for perfectness. This has not quite work yet, however the results are interesting and useful: certainly, they are for generations to come. Please read it here
The abstract: We study theoretically dynamics in a Josephson junction coupled to a mechanical resonator looking at the signatures of the resonance in d.c. electrical response of the junction. Such a system can be realized experimentally as a suspended ultra-clean carbon nanotube brought in contact with two superconducting leads. A nearby gate electrode can be used to tune the junction parameters and to excite mechanical motion. We augment theoretical estimations with the values of setup parameters measured in the samples fabricated.
We show that charging effects in the junction give rise to a mechanical force that depends on the superconducting phase difference. The force can excite the resonant mode provided the superconducting current in the junction has oscillating components with a frequency matching the resonant frequency of the mechanical resonator. We develop a model that encompasses the coupling of electrical and mechanical dynamics. We compute the mechanical response (the effect of mechanical motion) in the regime of phase bias and d.c. voltage bias. We thoroughly investigate the regime of combined a.c. and d.c. bias where Shapiro steps are developed and reveal several distinct regimes characteristic for this effect. Our results can be immediately applied in the context of experimental detection of the mechanical motion in realistic superconducting nano-mechanical devices.