Weblog Yuli Nazarov
Still a chance to devise a polaron …
In the end of April I’ve submitted a grant application to FOM (see http://yuli.weblog.tudelft.nl/2010/05/01/proposal-fom-projectruimte) whereby I hope to get a Ph.D. student to devise polarons in carbon nanotubes. Today they annouce the results of the first round. My application is still pending, however the chances for its approval do not look much better than in the beginning…
They say they got 42 applications and can grant no more than a quarter. Several proposals have been immediately approved, some have been rejected while mine belongs to the group of 12 that they want to send to the referees. Wish me some luck.
In case you wish to see the proposal, I’ve uploaded it to Rapidshare
http://rapidshare.com/files/405740053/fom_projectruimte_2010_Nazarov_v2.pdf.html
Enjoy.
Pieter de Groot
born in Marken, has reached the Ph.D. title today. His promotor, Hans Mooij, flanked by Kees Harmans, has stressed several times that in case of Pieter the title should read "doctor of engineering" thereby showing his appreciation for perfect designs of qubits and read-outs Pieter has accomplished in the course of his promotion work.
The work presented in the thesis is of exceptional quality and resonance. However here in Delft this is very usual. What was unusual is a high quality of the defence: with no exaggeration, it was one of the best defences I ever attended. Pieter managed not only to answer all the questions and keep the opponents at bay: he did so without telling any unjustified and/or scientifically ambigouos things. His propositions were both provocative and formulated in such a way that people with opposite views could sign them: Pieter could be indispensible in formation of Dutch government.
Yet I hope he would not rush to politics and stay in research: we all would profit form this.
Diego Riste
nato ad Ancona, graduated today. I was in the commission and was surprised to learn that diamond dust is not at all toxic: I always thought it was a poison of choice in Middle Ages. Diego did quantum manipulation of NV centers in diamond in the group of Ronal Hanson and has produced a good harmonic thesis where everything was present: theorical background, very sucsessful experiment, a promising analysis of possible applications and even a bit of physics.
He’s got a mark that is highest possible one in quantum transport group, 9. Good luck, Diego, with future research.
Oranje
I did not think I would be watching a football match on TV. Last time I enjoyed this activity the TV sets were black-and-white (and Uruguay was on forth place, if I recall correctly). Yet the magic of collective madness works on me as well, and today I was watching.
Not bad. Was a real fight, was a sense of achievement. A deserved win.
Juriaan van Tilburg
student of Leo Kouwenhoven, has got this Ph. D. title today. He’s fabricated, contacted and measured more than a thousand of nanowire samples, so their total length spans almost a centimeter. Close to the end of the Ph.D. term he’s been awarded by – how he puts it – "intense happiness" of observation of single electron spin. Good work, good thesis, good person: the whole science is founded on shoulders of such people.
Though I had to object one of his propositions. He wrote that the influence of the position of plant Venus on one’s birth is identical to that of an apple at 1 cm distance. I believe that this statement has arised from a theoretical estimation based on a model where the concrete details of birth process have been oversimplified if not at all neglected. Well, it’s just a matter of experience…
Kavli lunch
has taken place yesterday. Robert Kohn, president of Kavli Foundation, and Miyong Chung, vice-president of science programs, were visiting our institution, as you remember, Kavli institute of NanoScience. They wanted to meet and talk to some faculty, this gave the reason for the lunch.
The lunch was "foreign", that is, deviated in all aspects from traditional bisness Dutch lunch. Food was warn and tasty, milk was absent. Excellent fish.
Faculty were few, half were freshly-hired assistant professors from biological part, eager to talk about their research. We’ve started noticing that we’ve plenty of time and decided to introduce ourselfs. After introduction there was hardly any time left. Yet Robert Kohn told us of ways Kavli foundation likes its money to be spent, and some new initiatives. Everything made sense, it was a clear and informative presentation.
Sad news
I have learned today. Alex Savchenko, professor of condensed matter physics of University of Exeter, has passed away on Sunday as a result of a sudden heart failure. Strong, handsome man, always smiling friendly. Sportive: first dan in aikido. This could happen to anybody, not to him.
Alex Savchenko did quantum transpot under resonant conditions, studied interaction effects, Quantum Hall. Did many spectacular noise measurements. Last years was one of the leaders of graphene research in UK.
Me and my students have intensively collaborated with Savchenko and his team in 2002-3. There were more collaborative projects that we have postponed. Seems like indefinitely…
Grant rest, o Lord, to the soul of Thy servant Alexander.
Altai summary
I’m back from Altai, the trip took 33 hours from door to door. Time to summarize things learned and impressions collected.
1. Qubits and nanomech grow closer and closer together. Recent works of NEC group in collaboration with Munich prove this.
2. Astafiev from the same NEC group bets to re-do all non-linear atomic optics with a qubit and is close to completion of this challenging plan. If accomplished, qubits as artificial atoms will acquire all the functionalities of traditional atoms. So we do not need old atoms anymore: we can safely replace them with qubits.
3. Theorists can be useful in revealing and studying problems the engineers of Intel corporation will enconter next year (talk of V. F. Lukichev, Institute of Physics and Technology, Russian Academy of Sciences)
4. Varelii Vinokour from Argonne National Lab has made a major contribution to the art of scientific presentation. First half of his talk has been devoted to scrupulous description of wrongdoings of his scientific opponents. He also mention that these wrongdoings were instrumental for his accelerated promotion to Argonne Distinguished Fellow. Unfortunately, I appeared too conservative for this novel type of talk and so-extended introduction did not help me to gasp the scientific side of the conflict described.
5. Fluctuation-dissipation theorem is wrong: this was a claim of prof. Averin from Stony Brook. Yet during the talk we have learned that FDT is ok: rather, there seem to be a problem with description of high-frequency thermal conductance with Kubo formalism.
Qubits in Altai mountains
do occur. It’s a second day I am here, in the heart of Altai, mysterious craddle of all turkish nations, among mistly forests, rocky hills, and unbelievably wild rivers: water seem to be boiling at all times.
There is a workshop in nanotech organized by people from Novosibirsk State Technical University. It is dominated by quantum superconducting devices and Russian-born scientists who work and live in West. The hidden agenga is perhaps the organizers wish to run a full-scale international conference, not sure about the place and use former compatriots as testers.
This is an unnecessary precaution: the place is well-run despite being in real wildreness, welcoming and the surroundings are magnificent. The only point it is a bit difficult to reach. We flew to Novosibirsk, that is an adventure by itself. Then we made a 10-hour bus ride through Siberian steppes. Those are usually dubbed cold. I wished it were true on that day: there were thirty in shadow, and there was hardly a shadow. It begun to rain only soon after we have reached the place…
more about Dresden
Let me summarize my impressions from Dresden workshop that I’ve left on 17-6-2010. Its official name was "Quantum Information Concepts for Condensed Matter Problems". It was very timely to consolidate an emerging community of condensed matter theorists: unfortunately there was just a single experimental talk, very good one but yet not in condensed matter.
The organizers where:
Ian Affleck (University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada)
Masud Haque (MPIPKS Dresden, Germany)
Ulrich Schollwöck (LMU München, München, Germany)
A typical activity reported in the course of a workshop is to take a complicated many-boby wave function such as of Fractional Quantum Hall state, or Heisenberg chain, numerically compute entanglemet of a part of the system, and compare it with known theoretical predictions. Both making predictions and computing is challenging and difficult. The expectation is that the activity will let us understand more about the properties and internal structure of the complicated many-body states, and it looks like there is some progress here.
Another activity is connected to the words "quantum quench": perhaps the most buzzing word combination at the conference. In this case, the dynamics of entanglement is of interest. The value to predict/compute is the change of entanglement that takes place when two parts of the system are connected and disconnected. This is related to my attempts to study the transport of quantum information quantities.