Weblog Yuli Nazarov

was about Landau theory of second-order transitions, a theory that fascinated many generations of students, me including. With no exaggeration, it was the most valueable thing I’ve leaned at university, though, if I recall it correctly, not from the lectures. I wonder if I could convey at least a part of my fascination to the students.

Problem in hand was that one of the important aspects of the fascination is the recognition of the utmost generality of this theory: it can be applied to any type of ordering, to anything and anywhere. The best way to convey this aspect is to illustrate the theory with many and complementary examples and put it in the context of symmetry groups. Kardar is rather half-hearted about this, he lists some examples but basically keeps taking about “magnetization”. He also avoids the discussions of anisotropy of fourth-order terms and any mentioning of irreducible representations in the context of second-order transition. While I could understand his intent to keep things simple, this is rather a castration of Landau theory.

Well, it’s easy to be critical, it’s difficult to talk about these aspects given shot lecture time. I did it by just mentioning symmetries and groups, and considering pyro-electric transition where anisotropy plays an important role. I could put some stress on it letting the students think about possible scenarios of breaking the cubic symmetry. However, I should try to improve on these aspects next year.

(Posting back)

was about qubits. I have substantially changed it this year to make it consistent with my book and with some new developments: for instance, I mention Yale quantum processors. I guess I did it more or less ok, though, as in many lectures of this year, the first part was too slow and the second part was too fast. Wonder how did I developed this annoying attitude.

is one of my favourite. It is about quantum dots, and it goes through all aspects of those: we discuss definition, levels, persistent currents, the many-electron states, talk about transport concentrating on resonant tunneling, and go to chaos and Wigner-Dyson distribution.

This time I did not manage to reserve enough time for the last topic, it had to go fast. I had to took three minutes after the lecture to finish my favourite illustration of spectral rigidity of Wigner-Dyson distribution that involves barbed wire and German shepherds.

Apparently got too excited with the story: I’ve forgotten my laptop charger in the lecture room an could not recover it afterwards.

I’m posting back in time again, had no occasion to do it on correct date

I managed to repay my debt and to finish the previous lecture, and still round up the stuff of the eighth one. Good me. The stuff therefore had to be easy-going, and I skipped many details I would tell if I had more time. I’m happy I did so: it made it a better lecture.

We have discussed the relation between quantum mechanics and (1d) statistical physics, important and fascinating subject. The students were not abundant. What surprised me most is their reaction on a photograph I used when mentioning path integrals. That supposed to be funny and was met with stone faces. Was I not supposed to joke about path integrals?

I’m posting back in time: the last week of April was very hard to me, too much urgent and boring work during/after Paschal joy. Eighth lecture is about the origin of quantum transport, weak localization and mesoscopic fluctuations. I have renovated it a year ago and was not satisfied with the result. I had to trim the stuff a while before the lecture.

After all, it wasn’t bad on my feeling, I guess I could reach some equilibrium between formulas and pictures. Yet I was tired and mouth-tied for some reason, spoke with difficulty, and, to my own astonishment, mixed up English tenses.

Though Chris Drost was kind enough to say he didn’t noticed this.

has taken place today. It was difficult material-wise. I am not satisfied with the way Kardar presents the transition between his particle book and his field book. In fact, I think that the aspects worth mentioned right at the transition are certaintly present in the book: but scattered in pieces over at least four chapters. So I wanted to proceed differently, and brought these pieces together. The lecture is supposed to consist of philosophical part, intermezzio of Ising model, and description of methods general for all the models.

Well, I have had a terrible time problem. It looked like a first lecture I ever prepared. The philosophical part was told in more or less normal tempo. Yet I have to speed up already at Ising model and begun to skip some details. As to the methods part, I could only do mean field: I’d need 15-20 minutes more to finish the part. Terrible. I’ve spent so much time to prepare the lecture, was anxious about the presentation so I worked till 2 a.m. today. The result was clearly below the expectations.

There must be a way to present the stuff the way planned. I swear that next year I’ll practice the lecture again with timer in hand. And will go to bed well before 2 a.m.

has taken place today. One of the most spectacular topics and one of the highest achievements of quantum transport so far: home-made quantum mechanics achieved by combining Josephson effect and Coulomb blockade.

It looks like a semester break was enough for deterioration of my professional qualities. Although the lecture has not that many slides and originally (five years ago) has been planned as 45 min lecture, I did not manage to organize time-line correctly: too much bubble-talking at first slides, way too fast presentation of the last slides. There were times I did this lecture better. However, I think there was a contact with the audience, so I’m marginally satisfied.