Posts in category Research

is finally submitted. Many have helped me with advice, encouragement, proof-reading and filling in the tables: I wish to thank them all. Probability theory tells that a chance that the application is granted is thin. Yet I hope for this: long live Unified Theory of Quantum Transport!

This does not set me free though: there is another application deadline approaching. In the framework of NWO-nano initiative I’d like to ask fonds to investigate polaronic properties of carbon nanotubes and their potential device application: I see there very interesting and various physics ranging from quantum entaglement to the dynamics of bucket handle. Still not sure I will actually apply: the research would be purely theoretical, so its appreciation is questionable.

I have to do good, especially in Lent period. Nine days ago I have tried to do good by helping a publication of a manuscript that, in my opinion, is exceptionally good but does not seem to receive a proper consideration in Physical Review Letters. I wrote a letter to editors. Till now, I’ve received no response. So it looks like this attempt to do good failed as many others. In a weak hope that a bit of publicity still might do some good, I publish the letter here (scrapping small sensitive details).

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Dear dr Mitra, prof Castro Neto,

I have learned from the authors of  arXiv:0906.4076 that this submission has finally received a negative publication advice. In my opinion, this advice can only result from an unfortunate misunderstanding. Thereby I appeal to you to reconsider the decision. I do not make this appeal for the sake of the authors: they can take care of themselves. I make it because I fill attached to PRL having published my major contributions there. I want the journal to accept  the manuscripts that report true advances in theoretical physics. I do not want to hear the rumors that the current evaluation procedures and referee’s attitudes make the acceptance of original manuscripts very unlikely, instead favoring secondary research and aberrative speculations.

While the manuscript submitted is not free from presentational drawbacks, nor from the statements reflecting personal tastes of the authors,  it reports  the biggest advance in bosonization since seventies of last century. It restores scientific truth distorted by several recent publications of very questionable quality, those by chance have received a positive publication advice.

If you think that a detailed and balanced referee report will help you to make a correct decision, I would be willing to provide one. 

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gave a talk today for Quantum Nanoscience stuff. Gary is presently a post-doc with Leo Kouwenhoven. However, this may change soon, and I wish Gary best luck with this.

Gary has been looking for best ways to make cute nanotube devices, and was lucky to find those. In particular, he has made tunable p-n and p-n-p  nanotube junctions and a mechanical resonator of unbelievable quality factor. That inspired him greatly. The number of new ideas in his talk has exceeded the number of slides by a factor and could keep busy the whole Kavli Institute for ten years. Good program, in short.

I met Gary later on the day when we with a group of people were trying to discuss some nanoelectromechanical things. 

gave a talk today for Quantum NanoScience stuff (although there were students present in the audience). Leo is a true quantum engineer, one of the few on this planet. Actually, the best one I ever met. I like both the physical realization of his quantum processor (josephson-based superconducting electronics, live-long field of Hans Mooij) and his no-nosense approach to this field. He’s a goal and finds means. His interest to quantum feedback brings very intruiging physical questions that overlap very well with my own research agenda.

Presently, Leo is a post-doc in Yale, with Rob Schoelkopf. He’s American look and feel. Very occasionaly, an extra-energetic gesture witnesses his Italian heritage. 

I liked the speaker, the topic and the contens. The only thing I’ve got mixing feelings about was the road at his slides: he showed it to denomostate that he knows how to reach the goal. The road looked vaguely familiar. It could lead to an isolated dusty gas station. To a drive-in cinema or a luna-park. To a suburb residenial area with littered sidewalks and skyscapers at the horizon. I am so happy in Delft!

has given today a talk at our Nanoscience seminar. I knew dr Taylor as being involved in collaborations that resulted in interesting and ground-breaking publications. I came to listen to him with high expectations.

With no exaggeration, this was the worst talk I ever attended. I’ve listened to more than a thousand scientific talks that have varied very much in skill, comprehensibility and general qualities. However in every case the speaker attempted to relate the subject of the talk to the previous research, put it in the context known, and from very beginning give a preview of the results. At least, explain the title of the talk. None of these four elements were present in the talk of dr Taylor. In the beginning, the speaker has encouraged the questions from the audience. So I have asked some: I could not know that the speaker encouraged questions just to ignore them.

Dr Taylor must be a respected scientist, and the talk might be quite illuminating at the end. Unfortunately, I cannot stay till the end: I just got very unpleasant feeling and left after forty minutes. I have not understood a slightest bit of it.

gave a talk in our department on Jan. 25. His research mostly concerns optical and paramagnetic excitation of impurity ions in transparent crystals like ruby or diamond (these ions determine colors of precious stones). It is an active research area with a nano-twist: people are trying to make nanoparticles out of the crystals so that there is a single ion per nanoparticle, position the particles,  connect them optically using metal strips, or put them into an artificial crystal (of nanometer period) that could provide localization of the photons emitted by the ion.

Several groups are (hyper)active in the area. Roman belongs to Jelezko team of TU Dresden. Roland Hanson, our yongest faculty, stands under banner of diamond quantum physics here at TU Delft.

Precisios stones fascinate and, reportedly, could even enslave your mind. As you know, there is a small nuclear reactor at TU. There were (and are) projects to make a commercial use of this rather unique facility. One of the projects was to change the color of precious stones by exposing them to radiation: sometimes a color change can change the market value of a stone by an order of magnitude (I mean, increase this value). Somehow this project did not go: was that because the diamonds shone too much after the exposure? 

gave a talk in our department on Jan. 13. He introduced for us spintronics of individual atoms. Using STM techniques, he was able to position magnetic atoms on a semi-insulating substrate. With the same STM, he can run currents through the atoms revealing their excited spin states. The most fascinating part of his talk described how to catch a magnetic atom at the STM tip and run the current through another atom on the substrate.

Sander Otte graduated from Leiden and has been promoted there. He is presently post doc in NIST Maryland. More about him/his research can be found at http://www.nist.gov/cnst/otte.cfm.

Thursday Jan 21 and Friday Jan 22 I have spent in Brussels, Universite Libre. There was a scientific school (!) for master students. I find the idea astonishing: if something like this happens in Delft, it usually consists of two-three lectures of a VERY popular level, a sort you can read in kindergarten without risking to tire kids. There in Brussel it was entirely different: all the lecturers invited kept presentation at scientific level. The students have been warned: the school is called "Understanding and exploiting COMPLEXITY at the nanoscale". Yet the attendance was spectacular, despite the fact that it was an examination week. I really love that French-speaking people are not afraid of looking clever.

Except me, the lectures came from statistical physics community, and their definition of "nanoscale" was rather different from others: they concern situations were the fluctuations of would-be macroscopic quantities are visible. For instance, this includes population genetics presented by Luca Peliti.  There was an interesting series of experimental lectures by Sergio Ciliberto.  I was talking about quantum transport, as usual.