Weblog Yuli Nazarov
Palm sunday
was there yesterday, a wonderful feast of meeting our Lord entering Jerusalem, a joy mixed with premonition of His suffering.
Our priest preached the following (not sure I reproduce this as it meant, rather, it’s like it came to me.
You stay here today with box branches, imitating the crowd that met our Lord in Jerusalem with palm leaves. Like they, you exclaim “Hosanna”, that is, “Save us!”.
Yet do you remember that just in a couple of days the same crowd cried out:”Crucify him!”? It is simple to say: “We are not they, that we will not imitate”. It takes an effort to understand why did they do so.
They did so because the salvation did not come in forms desired. There were no spectacular triumph, neither immediate liberation. Instead, something strange has happened.
And when we pray “Save us”, what salvation do we ask for? Isn’t this an immediate liberation from everyday burdens and inconveniences? Isn’t that a request of immediate and spectacular prevailing of “good” (that’s us) over “bad”?
So are we ready to accept our salvation in a way He likes?
Polarons in suspended carbon nanotubes
this news deservers more comment and expressiveness for me, but I have to keep it short:
Izak Snyman and me have submitted today our study on polarons suspended. You can read it here, please enjoy!
Coulomb blockade of Majorana fermions: research proposal
There’s many interesting things going around, yet I do not write anything since I have to write something I have to be completely adsorbed with. This is another attempt to get a research grant in national competition, FOM Projectruimte.
Although Majorana’s is very popular topic, few works actually address the question of their interaction. See a chance to exercise my expertise since I’ve been working with superconductivity, Coulom blockade and zero-energy states in there already 20 years ago.
April 12, 1961
the date of the first manned space flight. When I was a kid, news about advances in space research came about almost every month: that created an athmosphere of a development, adventure, and a hope for more interesting and content-rich adventures. And my kids read about majour advances of international terrorism, and spectacular school shootings…
What can we do to keep the dream and hope alive?
Any suggestions?
David Marcos
has received his Ph. D. title yesterday in Materials Science Institue in Madrid, Ramon Aguado being his supervisor. The thesis of David is almost unimaginable in our time: it consists of experimental and theoretical work, and covers topics that, although all belong to quantum transport, are so various as being more suitable for a life-time cv rather than for a phd thesis bundle. Generous Spanish Ph.D. fellowships allow this in principle: a student may be finaced to stay in a research group abroad for up to 3 month every year. However, from people I know only David Marcos managed to produce a research publication during each stay.
He had to measure C12/C13 carbon nanotubes in Harvard, compute tiny shifts of flux-qubit levels in Delft, putting diamonds (theoretically) into a flux loop in Copenhagen, and get cemented by full counting statistics in Berlin, all that with sucsess. Perhaps, David, you could go a bit deeper in each of these subjects. Nevertheless you kind of give an example of broadness and overview a modern student can achieve if he/she only wants to.
It was a pleasure to meet some old friends from Madrid and elsewhere and get lunch in a hunting club frequented by King of Spain. David is a first student of Ramon Aguado: congratulations to him as well.
Sixth lecture Advanced StatisticalMechanics
has taken place on Thurdsday. It was a beautiful bright morning, typical for beginning of spring. At the time of the beginning, there was a single student in the audience. He did not feel easy, looked like he would gladly be otherplace. I waited a bit, and we got a company, then yet more, so like in fifteen minutes number of students was back to normal. The phemonenon is known, the student activitity always reaches a deep minimun at the last lecture before the semester break. Especially if the weather is nice.
Apart from this, the lecture was satisfactory. Or, to put it more carefully, I expected a worser one since I have decided to make it close to the book and Kardar uses the topic of ideal quantum gas mainly to brush algebraic skills of students. He derives a single implicit formula and obtains all physical cases by tedious limit calculations.
Given this, I think we still could enjoy some physics this bright morning
Sixth Lecture Quantum Transport
has taken place yesterday. We made a detour from Columb blockade back to scattering theory to combine it with superconductivity. We have discussed Andreev reflection, Josephson current and their relation with normal-nanostructure scattering.
I’d say that so far it has been the most satisfying lecture. I mean satisfying for me, it is for students to judge if it was satisfactory. I was on time, could pose control questions and gather satisfactory response. The topic by itself is rather fascinating but still easy
Next lecture only comes in three weeks, after the semester break.
Kavli Newsletter
has appeared in press today. This is an initiative of Cees Dekker and I think a nice one, at least the first issue is quite interesting. You can find it here.
Here is my column for the newsletter:
For a sufficiently deep physicist, time is
both relative and irrelevant. This is why
only recently I came to a new insight: neither Cees Dekker, nor me, nor Leo Kouwenhoven are just-started faculties. Even
Herre van der Zant has accomplished
his studies a while ago. The marvelous
and heretic scientific developments that
energized our early careers became a
commonplace. They have formed well-established fields, that have already
traditions, rituals, known pathways and
no-trespassing signs that indicate the subfields. They wrote about our research:
“New times ahead”. Now they’d write:
“New times long past”. Fortunately, we
have enough influence to prevent this.
The immediate reason for the new insight were new appointments made in
2010. Finally, new faces! Really new:
for a change, they are not our students
and postdocs and KNAW/NWO fellows (well, almost). From bio side, there
are Bertus Beaumont, Christtophe Danelon, David Grunwald (Sorry Sander, for
me your face doesn’t count new). From
quantum side, those are Leo DiCarlo,
Gary Steele, Sander Otte. This is a real
change of guard, the whole new generation to shape the future of our Kavli
Institute. Frankly and strictly personally,
I’d love to see you more frequently:
some I’ve seen only once. Yet this does
not count, I understand how busy you
are setting up your environment. What
does count is the long-awaited novelty
you bring, and the hope that your active research will make your novel fields
outdated as fast as ours did.
Since I was a starting faculty only yesterday, would you mind a piece of advice
(sure you need one).
a. In the course of my first year, I got a
new surprise every day. Once that
was a pleasant one.
b. Shortly after I started, they announced
budget and job cuts. (Does this sound
a history? Then it repeats itself). The
natural and just law: “last in, first
out” was not applied to me only because somebody said: “over my dead
body”. Always have somebody (disposable) around.
c. If confronted with a (scientific) no-trespassing sign, just go ahead. Yes, they
will shoot. Yet your little sacrifice will
advance science as whole.
d. If not satisfied with your working
conditions (no separate room, no
promotion rights, closed toilets, etc.),
fight for those and unite for fight. Annoy your colleague to make her/him
equally unsatisfied. Friends are nice,
allies are important.
Welcome from the deep of my heart!
Recontres de Moriond
is a name of a conference in quantum mesoscopic physics that is held once in two-three years. The conference is distinguished in its broad scope, quality and quantity of talks, as well as location. It is held in La Thuile, at italian side of Mont Blanc. There are skiing facilities, yet I do not ski and can honestly say that my time is devoted to science (and stolen from equation since it is the semester time. However, I could not miss this conference.)
There are piles of white snow that I missed not having it enough this winter. My talk will start in about an hour. I will tell about the work with Dima Pikulin, Topological properties of superconducting junctions.
Student reaction on Advanced Statistical Mechanics
Today I got an “official” student’s feedback on my course Advanced Statistical Mechanics. It’s prepared by by response group of our student’s society VvTP.
There are three points:
- Students are positive about the lectures and like the books (good..)
- They like to make presentations and especially the feedback they get (very good, Alina!)
- They find the exercises of much higher level than the lectures (oops…) and would love easier homework(ok…)
Have to think hard about the last point, never thought about it in such a way. A solution is perhaps to make the lectures twice more difficult and give no homework… How would you like it?