Weblog Yuli Nazarov
Fifth lectrure advanced statistical mechanics
has taken place today. Well, there could be more students. I have been preparing to the topic that introduces perturbation theory in the context of non-ideal gas for quite a while. This is why I’m dissatisfied with the result: I would not if less time was spent.
I have changed the system of slide preparation which is now Latex-based. I’ve shown to students some simulation programs from Open Source Physics: they seemed interested.Will try to make homework based on these programs.
Fifth lectrure quantum transport
is traditionally devoted to Coulomb blockade, and marks an important change in the course, that from scattering to interacting electrons. My assesment of the lecture is rather positive, I was able to tell everything I wanted. I could speak more coherently, and give less details in one place and more in another.
The interaction with Sankore 3.1 is still not ideal. I have discovered a problem with pdf font conversion yesterday in the evening and could not solve it with usual methods, so I went to bed at 1:30 am only. I ended making images of each pdf page, arranging the images to a pdf again and using Sankore 3.1 on the result. It worked, but the image resolution is rather low, it looks ugly upon zooming.
Phase slip devices accepted
On the last day of the year past, Alina has heroically submitted a long article about charge-sensitive phase-slip devices. We got soon the referee reports that contain many remarks, suggestions and requests. This is hardly surprising given the fact that we were really in a hurry to submit the article. To give a detail, we have omitted the author’s list: not for the sake of brevity, neither from extensive modesty, just so happened that our attention has been adsorbed by more important details…
So we had to work hard and long to implement all the remarks. Alina has submitted the revised version only yesterday evening. Today in the morning she got the acceptance note. That you cannot read in fairy tales, since fairy tales are meant to be trustworthy. Very special decision speed. This, of course, stresses the urgency and importance of our article.
On a more serios note, we have taken the referee remarks very seriously. We have added a two-page appendix that summarizes advances in the field of phase slips from stone age up to know. Let me advertize this: I think it will be usefull for everybody. Please find it here in the version number 3 that will be available soon.
Topological properties of superconducting junctions
is a new cond-mat submission I’ve done with Dima Pikulin. He is a PhD student of Carlo Beenakker. We have a project that involves Mayorana states in superconductors, very fashionable and noisy topic nowadays. This is our attempt to reduce this noise, and to find the link between some recent results and well-known ones
Please read it here.
Forgiveness Sunday 2011
is today. This starts Great Lent for Orthodox christians.
Our clery changed clothes during the service and they remain in black-silver for seven weeks coming. Clery and parochians use today’s occasion to ask each other of mercy to forgive their wrongdoings. There is a special Rite for this, traditionally involving a deep bow. Both souls and spines have to work today.
We have heard the Efraim Sirin’s prayer that will help us
for each day of the Lent:
- O Lord and Master of my life,
the spirit of emptiness, despair, domination or idle talk
do not let me have it.
(Prostration). - But give rather a spirit of purity, humility, patience and love, give me to Thy servant.
(Prostration). - Yea, O Lord and King,
grant me to see mine own faults and not to judge my brother,
for blessed art Thou unto the ages of ages. Amen.
(Prostration). - O God, cleanse me a sinner,
(12 times, with a bow made for each).
And,om this occasion, dear reader, I ask you to forgive me any offences and wrongdoings I may have done to you: either in course of direct communication or by writting. Wish me a good Lent.
Meet the rector 2011
I attended a traditional meeting of the university stuff with the rector. Last time I’ve done it in november 2009. Many things have changed since that, most importantly, the rector. Karel Luyben took this post in January 2010.
I think (thought) I know Karel Luyben pretty well since beforehead he was the dean of our department for almost twelve years. He is very assertive and energetic, can emit charisma and lead, quick to form an opinion, and even quicker to implement it. You undrestand that these qualities can be eihter good or bad for achieving your personal goals, depenging on mutual orientation of you and Karel Luyben.
Perhaps I can illustrate this with a short story. About 3 years ago we underwent a centralization of computer systems of the whole university. There was an information meeting about the development. During the meeting, I understood that if plans are implemented I will not be able to use my computer anymore. I have tried to reason that perhaps the centralization does not have to be so overwhelming. The guy responsible for this made very big eyes and said I have to talk to the dean about this. At 10 p.m. I’ve emailed to the dean. Next morning I’ve found a one-page response message dated by 3 a.m. (!). From this I’ve learned that the dean (i) strongly disproves my involvement with the centralization and warns me not to stay in the way of the progress, (ii) advises to learn more about the program, perhaps starting with correct spelling of its name, (iii) commands computer people to attend my needs. The latter has worked, I do not have computer problems anymore (many students around do have, but this is a different story…).
Coming back to the meeting on Friday. In contrast to previous setups, people gathered (about 20) have presented all layers of the university community, including assistant and associated professors. This has actually resuled in more active and multi-topic discussion. The format of the meeting was not fixed but quickly and naturally become a question-answer session: people pose questions, and Karel Luyben answered. Yet from time to time people answered each other questions.
Learned a couple of (relatively) new things. So-called “allocation model” that concerned distribution of money within the university, resulted in intense internal competetion and intense administrating of education and research, does not have the support of the rector. (Looks like we’d better compete externally. Gosh, quite some people openly complained…). Promotion of young people to Ph.D. is the primary task of this university. TU Delf will profile itself as a “broad” technical university, perhaps not pumping all money into selected research/educational activities.
To summarize, it was an interesting and lively meeting. From the other hand, on my taste it was a bit too chaotic and diverse: in fact we could only get through two points of the five-point agenda. I even complained about it in the end of the meeting: perhaps it is a good idea to have it with smaller number of participants.
Fourth Lecture Quantum Transport
took place on Wednesday. Perhaps I schould call it a moderate succsess . I did all slides despite the fact there were 31 of them. There was a contact with the audience. I have an impression that I was able to outline the essence of applications of circuit theory.
Yet I’ve discovered small mistakes in the slides and was rather confused with those. Some have appeared due to undesired font conversion in pdf files. Some obviously persisted in this slide set yet a year ago: funny I did not pay attention to those that time.
My current workflow of slide preparation makes it very difficult to correct these mistakes. I am planning to switch to Latex-based slides. This, however, requires the conversion of all sildes to another format: doable but time-consuming task.
Fourth Lecture Advanced Statistical Mechanics
has taken place today. Moderate number of students, contact with audience persists although not very intensive. Finally, I’m through the basics! Yet not satisfied because lectured too slowly, had to skip the slides, still cannot find good tempo. Must do something to boost the performance…
Visit Dahlem
was another Blitzvisit to Germany, monday-tuesday this week. Dahlem is actually a borough of Greater Berlin, yet why should I care about the gigantic city if the borough is a home to a Free University and, importantly, to Dahlem Center for Complex Quantum Systems. I visited groups of Piet Brouwer and Felix von Oppen, talk to them and their students and postdocs, my former student and present collaborator Jeroen Danon.
The groups are splendid, the collaborative atmosphere and interactions are unbelivably good, if I had energy for a sabbatical I know were would I spend it. There’s quite some Mayorana and topological activity in the groups, I was surprized how fast has this fashion spreaded over the world. It was pleasantly frosty. I could not sleep half of a night thinking about an equation, like I did in my young ages. This means the visit really gave me a boost.
Less pleasant thing about the visit is that it has contributed to piling up urgent things I have to do (and hardly doing) beside the semester. Today I have attempted a break-through and tried to finish three activities from the middle of the pile: alias, none is finished.
Third Lecture Advanced Statistical Mechanics
was not that terrible: of course I speak for myself, but it seems I am coming in terms with the course and the audience. The latter even responded my questions and reacted on stimuls: rewarding it is.
I am a lecture behind the original schedule but fell comfortable about this. Since I have not posted the schedule for the second half of the semester yet, I can trim it incorporating thechanges. Next year I shall change the schedule that appeared rather unrealistic.