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nanoscale views

nanoscale views
An update, + a paper as a fun distraction My post last week clearly stimulated some discussion.  I know people don't come here for political...
10 hours ago
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10 hours ago
My post last week clearly stimulated some discussion.  I know people don't come here for political news, but as a professional scientist it's hard to ignore the chaotic present situation, so here are some things to read, before I talk about a fun paper: Science reports on what...
nanoscale views
Turbulent times While I've been absolutely buried under deadlines, it's been a crazy week for US science, and things...
a week ago
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a week ago
While I've been absolutely buried under deadlines, it's been a crazy week for US science, and things are unlikely to calm down anytime soon.  As I've written before, I largely try to keep my political views off here, since that's not what people want to read from me, and I want...
nanoscale views
This week in the arXiv: quantum geometry, fluid momentum "tunneling", and pasta sauce Three papers caught my eye the other day on the arXiv at the start of the new year: arXiv:2501.00098...
4 weeks ago
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4 weeks ago
Three papers caught my eye the other day on the arXiv at the start of the new year: arXiv:2501.00098 - J. Yu et al., "Quantum geometry in quantum materials" - I hope to write up something about quantum geometry soon, but I wanted to point out this nice review even if I haven't...
nanoscale views
End of the year thoughts - scientific philanthropy and impact As we head into 2025, and the prospects for increased (US) government investment in science,...
a month ago
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a month ago
As we head into 2025, and the prospects for increased (US) government investment in science, engineering, and STEM education seem very limited, I wanted to revisit a topic that I wrote about over a decade ago (!!!), the role of philanthropy and foundations in these...
nanoscale views
Technological civilization and losing object permanence In the grand tradition of physicists writing about areas outside their expertise, I wanted to put...
a month ago
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a month ago
In the grand tradition of physicists writing about areas outside their expertise, I wanted to put down some thoughts on a societal trend.  This isn't physics or nanoscience, so feel free to skip this post. Object permanence is a term from developmental psychology.  A person (or...
nanoscale views
Items for discussion, including google's latest quantum computing result As we head toward the end of the calendar year, a few items: Google published a new result in...
a month ago
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a month ago
As we head toward the end of the calendar year, a few items: Google published a new result in Nature a few days ago.  This made a big news splash, including this accompanying press piece from google themselves, this nice article in Quanta, and the always thoughtful blog post by...
nanoscale views
Seeing through your head - diffuse imaging From the medical diagnostic perspective (and for many other applications), you can understand why it...
a month ago
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a month ago
From the medical diagnostic perspective (and for many other applications), you can understand why it might be very convenient to be able to perform some kind of optical imaging of the interior of what you'd ordinarily consider opaque objects.  Even when a wavelength range is...
nanoscale views
Foams! (or, why my split pea side dish boils over every Thanksgiving) Foams can be great examples of mechanical metamaterials.   Adapted from TOC figure of this...
2 months ago
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2 months ago
Foams can be great examples of mechanical metamaterials.   Adapted from TOC figure of this paper Consider my shaving cream.  You might imagine that the (mostly water) material would just pool as a homogeneous liquid, since water molecules have a strong attraction for one...
nanoscale views
Nanopasta, no, really Fig. 1 from the linked paper Here is a light-hearted bit of research that touches on some fun...
2 months ago
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2 months ago
Fig. 1 from the linked paper Here is a light-hearted bit of research that touches on some fun physics.  As you might readily imagine, there is a good deal of interdisciplinary and industrial interest in wanting to create fine fibers out of solution-based materials.  One...
nanoscale views
Brief items A few tidbits that I encountered recently: The saga of Ranga Dias at Rochester draws to a close,...
2 months ago
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2 months ago
A few tidbits that I encountered recently: The saga of Ranga Dias at Rochester draws to a close, as described by the Wall Street Journal.  It took quite some time for this to propagate through their system.  This is after multiple internal investigations that somehow were...
nanoscale views
Really doing mechanics at the quantum level A helpful ad from Science Made Stupid. Since before the development of micro- and...
2 months ago
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2 months ago
A helpful ad from Science Made Stupid. Since before the development of micro- and nanoelectromechanical techniques, there has been an interest in making actual mechanical widgets that show quantum behavior.  There is no reason that we should not be able to make a mechanical...
nanoscale views
Recent papers to distract.... Time for blogging has continued to be scarce, but here are a few papers to distract (and for readers...
2 months ago
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2 months ago
Time for blogging has continued to be scarce, but here are a few papers to distract (and for readers who are US citizens:  vote if you have not already done so!). Reaching back, this preprint by Aharonov, Collins, Popescu talks about a thought experiment in which angular...
nanoscale views
Guide to faculty searches, 2024 edition As you can tell from my posting frequency lately, I have been unusually busy.  I hope to be writing...
3 months ago
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3 months ago
As you can tell from my posting frequency lately, I have been unusually busy.  I hope to be writing about more condensed matter and nano science soon.   In the meantime, I realized that I have not re-posted or updated my primer on how tenure-track faculty searches work in physics...
nanoscale views
CHIPS and Science - the reality vs the aspiration I already wrote about this issue here back in August, but I wanted to highlight a policy statement...
4 months ago
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4 months ago
I already wrote about this issue here back in August, but I wanted to highlight a policy statement that I wrote with colleagues as part of Rice's Baker Institute's Election 2024: Policy Playbook, which "delivers nonpartisan, expert insights into key issues at stake on the 2024...
nanoscale views
Annual Nobel speculation thread Not that prizes are the be-all and end-all, but this has become an annual tradition.  Who are your...
4 months ago
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4 months ago
Not that prizes are the be-all and end-all, but this has become an annual tradition.  Who are your speculative laureates this year for physics and chemistry?  As I did last year and for several years before, I will put forward my usual thought that the physics prize could...
nanoscale views
Lots to read, including fab for quantum and "Immaterial Science" Sometimes there are upticks in the rate of fun reading material.  In the last few days: A...
4 months ago
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4 months ago
Sometimes there are upticks in the rate of fun reading material.  In the last few days: A Nature paper has been published by a group of authors predominantly from IMEC in Belgium, in which they demonstrate CMOS-compatible manufacturing of superconducting qubit hardware...
nanoscale views
Fiber optics + a different approach to fab Two very brief items of interest: This article is a nice popular discussion of the history of...
4 months ago
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4 months ago
Two very brief items of interest: This article is a nice popular discussion of the history of fiber optics and the remarkable progress it's made for telecommunications.  If you're interested in a more expansive but very accessible take on this, I highly recommend City of...
nanoscale views
Seeing through tissue and Kramers-Kronig There is a paper in Science this week that is just a great piece of work.  The authors find that by...
4 months ago
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4 months ago
There is a paper in Science this week that is just a great piece of work.  The authors find that by dyeing living tissue with a particular biocompatible dye molecule, they can make that tissue effectively transparent, so you can see through it.  The paper includes images (and...
nanoscale views
Items of interest The start of the semester has been very busy, but here are some items that seem interesting: As...
5 months ago
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5 months ago
The start of the semester has been very busy, but here are some items that seem interesting: As many know, there has been a lot of controversy in recent years about high pressure measurements of superconductivity.  Here is a first-hand take by one of the people who helped bring...
nanoscale views
Experimental techniques: bridge measurements When we teach undergraduates about materials and measuring electrical resistance, we tend to gloss...
5 months ago
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5 months ago
When we teach undergraduates about materials and measuring electrical resistance, we tend to gloss over the fact that there are specialized techniques for this - it's more than just hooking up a battery and an ammeter.  If you want to get high precision results, such as measuring...
nanoscale views
CHIP and Science, NSF support, and hypocrisy Note: this post is a semi-rant about US funding for science education; if this isn't your cup of...
6 months ago
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6 months ago
Note: this post is a semi-rant about US funding for science education; if this isn't your cup of tea, read no further. Two years ago, the CHIPS and Science Act (link goes to the full text of the bill, via the excellent congress.gov service of the Library of Congress) was signed...
nanoscale views
Items of interest A couple of interesting papers that I came across this week: There is long been an interest in...
6 months ago
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6 months ago
A couple of interesting papers that I came across this week: There is long been an interest in purely electronic cooling techniques (no moving parts!) that would work at cryogenic temperatures.  You're familiar with ordinary evaporative cooling - that's what helps cool down...
nanoscale views
The physics of squeaky shoes In these unsettling and trying times, I wanted to write about the physics of a challenge I'm facing...
6 months ago
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6 months ago
In these unsettling and trying times, I wanted to write about the physics of a challenge I'm facing in my professional life: super squeaky shoes.  When I wear a particularly comfortable pair of shoes at work, when I walk in some hallways in my building (but not all), my shoes...
nanoscale views
Brief items - light-driven diamagnetism, nuclear recoil, spin transport in VO2 Real life continues to make itself felt in various ways this summer (and that's not even an allusion...
6 months ago
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6 months ago
Real life continues to make itself felt in various ways this summer (and that's not even an allusion to political madness), but here are three papers (two from others and a self-indulgent plug for our work) you might find interesting. There has been a lot of work in recent...
nanoscale views
What is a Wigner crystal? Last week I was at the every-2-years Gordon Research Conference on Correlated Electron Systems at...
7 months ago
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7 months ago
Last week I was at the every-2-years Gordon Research Conference on Correlated Electron Systems at lovely Mt. Holyoke.  It was very fun, but one key aspect of the culture of the GRCs is that attendees are not supposed to post about them on social media, thus encouraging presenters...
nanoscale views
What is turbulence? (And why are helicopters never quiet?) Fluid mechanics is very often left out of the undergraduate physics curriculum.  This is a shame, as...
7 months ago
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7 months ago
Fluid mechanics is very often left out of the undergraduate physics curriculum.  This is a shame, as it's very interesting and directly relevant to many broad topics (atmospheric science, climate, plasma physics, parts of astrophysics).  Fluid mechanics is a great example of how...
nanoscale views
Artificial intelligence, extrapolation, and physical constraints Disclaimer and disclosure:  The "arrogant physicist declaims about some topic far outside their...
7 months ago
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7 months ago
Disclaimer and disclosure:  The "arrogant physicist declaims about some topic far outside their domain expertise (like climate change or epidemiology or economics or geopolitics or....) like everyone actually in the field is clueless" trope is very overplayed at this point, and...
nanoscale views
Materials families: Halide perovskites Looking back, I realized that I haven't written much about halide perovskites, which is quite an...
8 months ago
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8 months ago
Looking back, I realized that I haven't written much about halide perovskites, which is quite an oversight given how much research impact they're having.  I'm not an expert, and there are multiple extensive review articles out there (e.g. here, here, here, here, here), so this...
nanoscale views
Interesting reading - resonators, quantum geometry w/ phonons, and fractional quantum anomalous Hall Real life continues to be busy, but I wanted to point out three recent articles that I found...
8 months ago
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8 months ago
Real life continues to be busy, but I wanted to point out three recent articles that I found interesting: Mechanical resonators are a topic with a long history, going back to the first bells and the tuning fork.  I've written about micromachined resonators before, and the quest...
nanoscale views
Power and computing The Wall Street Journal last week had an article (sorry about the paywall) titled "There’s Not...
8 months ago
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8 months ago
The Wall Street Journal last week had an article (sorry about the paywall) titled "There’s Not Enough Power for America’s High-Tech Ambitions", about how there is enormous demand for more data centers (think Amazon Web Services and the like), and electricity production can't...
nanoscale views
Wind-up nanotechnology When I was a kid, I used to take allowance money and occasionally buy rubber-band-powered balsa wood...
9 months ago
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9 months ago
When I was a kid, I used to take allowance money and occasionally buy rubber-band-powered balsa wood airplanes at a local store.  Maybe you've seen these.  You wind up the rubber band, which stretches the elastomer and stores energy in the elastic strain of the polymer, as in...
nanoscale views
Moiré and making superlattices One of the biggest condensed matter trends in recent years has been the stacking of 2D materials and...
9 months ago
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9 months ago
One of the biggest condensed matter trends in recent years has been the stacking of 2D materials and the development of moiré lattices.  The idea is, take a layer of 2D material and stack it either (1) on itself but with a twist angle, or (2) on another material with a slightly...
nanoscale views
The future of the semiconductor industry, + The Mechanical Universe Three items of interest: This article is a nice review of present semiconductor memory...
9 months ago
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9 months ago
Three items of interest: This article is a nice review of present semiconductor memory technology.  The electron micrographs in Fig. 1 and the scaling history in Fig. 3 are impressive. This article in IEEE Spectrum is a very interesting look at how some people think we will get...
nanoscale views
Electronic structure and a couple of fun links Real life has been very busy recently.  Posting will hopefully pick up soon.   One brief item. ...
9 months ago
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9 months ago
Real life has been very busy recently.  Posting will hopefully pick up soon.   One brief item.  Earlier this week, Rice hosted Gabi Kotliar for a distinguished lecture, and he gave a very nice, pedagogical talk about different approaches to electronic structure calculations. ...
nanoscale views
Thoughts on undergrad solid-state content Figuring out what to include in an undergraduate introduction to solid-state physics course is...
10 months ago
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10 months ago
Figuring out what to include in an undergraduate introduction to solid-state physics course is always a challenge.   Books like the present incarnation of Kittel are overstuffed with more content than can readily fit in a one-semester course, and because that book has grown...
nanoscale views
Items of interest The time since the APS meeting has been very busy, hence the lack of posting.  A few items of...
10 months ago
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10 months ago
The time since the APS meeting has been very busy, hence the lack of posting.  A few items of interest: The present issue of Nature Physics has several articles about physics education that I really want to read.  This past week we hosted N. Peter Armitage for a really fun...
nanoscale views
APS March Meeting 2024, Day 4 and wrap-up Because of the timing of my flight back to Houston, I really only went to one session today, in...
11 months ago
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11 months ago
Because of the timing of my flight back to Houston, I really only went to one session today, in which my student spoke as did some collaborators.  It was a pretty interesting collection of contributed talks.   The work that's been done on spin transport in multiferroic...
nanoscale views
APS March Meeting 2024, Day 3 My highlights today are a bit thin, because I was fortunate enough to spend time catching up with...
11 months ago
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11 months ago
My highlights today are a bit thin, because I was fortunate enough to spend time catching up with collaborators and old friends, but here goes: Pedram Roushan from Google gave an interesting talk about noisy intermediate-scale quantum experiments for simulation.  He showed some...
nanoscale views
APS March Meeting 2024, Day 2 A decent part of today was spent in conversation with friends and colleagues, but here are some high...
11 months ago
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11 months ago
A decent part of today was spent in conversation with friends and colleagues, but here are some high points of scientific talks: The DMP prize session was excellent.  The first talk was by Harold Hwang, this year's awardee of the McGroddy Prize.  He gave a very compelling...
nanoscale views
APS March Meeting 2024, Day 1 There is no question that the meeting venue in Minneapolis is superior in multiple ways to last...
11 months ago
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11 months ago
There is no question that the meeting venue in Minneapolis is superior in multiple ways to last year's meeting in Las Vegas.  The convention center doesn't feel scarily confining, and it also doesn't smell like a combination of cigarettes and desperation. Here are a few...
nanoscale views
APS March Meeting 2024 - coming soon This week I'm going to be at the APS March Meeting in Minneapolis.  As I've done in past years, I...
11 months ago
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11 months ago
This week I'm going to be at the APS March Meeting in Minneapolis.  As I've done in past years, I will try to write up some highlights of talks that I am able to see, though it may be hit-or-miss.  If readers have suggestions for sessions or talks that they think will be...
nanoscale views
2024 version: Advice on choosing a graduate school It's been four years since I posted the previous version of this, so it feels like the time is right...
11 months ago
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11 months ago
It's been four years since I posted the previous version of this, so it feels like the time is right for an update. This is written on the assumption that you have already decided, after careful consideration, that you want to get an advanced degree (in physics, though much of...
nanoscale views
Continuing Studies course, take 2 A year and a half ago, I mentioned that I was going to teach a course through Rice's Glasscock...
11 months ago
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11 months ago
A year and a half ago, I mentioned that I was going to teach a course through Rice's Glasscock School of Continuing Studies, trying to give a general audience introduction to some central ideas in condensed matter physics.  Starting in mid-March, I'm doing this again.  Here is a...
nanoscale views
A couple of links + a thought experiment about spin A couple of interesting things to read: As someone interested in lost ancient literature and also...
12 months ago
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12 months ago
A couple of interesting things to read: As someone interested in lost ancient literature and also science, I really liked this news article from Nature about progress in reading scrolls excavated from Herculaneum.  The area around the Bay of Naples was a quite the spot for posh...
nanoscale views
Large magnetic fields as a scientific tool When I was at Berkeley at the beginning of the week to give a seminar, I was fortunate enough to...
12 months ago
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12 months ago
When I was at Berkeley at the beginning of the week to give a seminar, I was fortunate enough to overlap with their departmental physics colloquium by Greg Boebinger, an accomplished scientist who is also an extremely engaging and funny speaker.  Since 2004 he has been the...
nanoscale views
Generative AI and scientific images/diagrams Generative AI for image generation is a controversial topic for many reasons.  Still, as someone who...
a year ago
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a year ago
Generative AI for image generation is a controversial topic for many reasons.  Still, as someone who doesn't have a staff of graphic artists on hand to help make scientific illustrations, it has certainly been tempting to see whether it might be a useful tool.  My brief...
nanoscale views
Materials characterization techniques – a brief glossary Suppose someone has synthesized or found what they think is a new material. How do people studying...
a year ago
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a year ago
Suppose someone has synthesized or found what they think is a new material. How do people studying materials (condensed matter physicists, materials scientists, materials chemists) figure out what they have and understand its properties? That's the puzzle-solving aspect of...
nanoscale views
Dye-sensitized solar cells - an idea whose time has finally come? Dyes are generally small molecules that have electronic transitions with energies corresponding...
a year ago
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a year ago
Dyes are generally small molecules that have electronic transitions with energies corresponding to the visible spectrum of light (around 1-3 eV).  Around 35 years ago, the idea was put forward, particularly by Michael Grätzel and Brian O'Regan, to couple dye molecules to...
nanoscale views
Items of interest For the first post of the new calendar year, here are a few items that I thought were...
a year ago
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a year ago
For the first post of the new calendar year, here are a few items that I thought were interesting: Here is a feature article in Science that talks about the experimental quest for detecting Majorana fermions in solid state systems, bookended by the story of Majorana's...
nanoscale views
Very brief end of the year round-up It's hard to believe that it's already the end of 2023.  It's been a busy year for condensed matter;...
a year ago
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a year ago
It's hard to believe that it's already the end of 2023.  It's been a busy year for condensed matter; it's unfortunate that two of the biggest stories (problems with high pressure superconductivity papers; the brief excitement about LK99, the not-actually-a-superconductor) were...
nanoscale views
New paper - plasmons, excitons, and steering energy We have a new paper out in Nano Letters (arxiv version here), and I wanted to explain a bit about it...
a year ago
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a year ago
We have a new paper out in Nano Letters (arxiv version here), and I wanted to explain a bit about it and why I think it's a really cool result.    I've written before about the Purcell Effect.  When we study quantum mechanics, we learn that the rates of processes, like the...
nanoscale views
AI/ML and condensed matter + materials science Materials define the way we live.  That may sound like an exaggeration that I like to spout because...
a year ago
15
a year ago
Materials define the way we live.  That may sound like an exaggeration that I like to spout because I'm a condensed matter physicist, but it's demonstrably true.  Remember, past historians have given us terms like "Stone Age", "Bronze Age", and "Iron Age", and the "Information...
nanoscale views
Intriguing papers - exquisite thermal measurements + automated materials discovery/synthesis It's a busy time, but I wanted to point out a couple of papers from this past week. First, I want...
a year ago
10
a year ago
It's a busy time, but I wanted to point out a couple of papers from this past week. First, I want to point to this preprint on the arxiv, where the Weizmann folks do an incredibly technically impressive thing.  I'd written recently about the thermal Hall effect, when a...
nanoscale views
Noise in a strange metal - pushing techniques into new systems Over the holiday weekend, we had a paper come out in which we report the results of measuring charge...
a year ago
34
a year ago
Over the holiday weekend, we had a paper come out in which we report the results of measuring charge shot noise (see here also) in a strange metal.   Other write-ups of the work (here and especially this nice article in Quanta here) do a good job of explaining what we saw, but I...
nanoscale views
Faculty positions at Rice - follow-up I had mentioned about 6 weeks ago that my department at Rice is searching in the quantum/AMO space...
a year ago
11
a year ago
I had mentioned about 6 weeks ago that my department at Rice is searching in the quantum/AMO space for experiment and theory.   Now I want to put the larger context of this out there - Rice has four quantum-related searches going on right now: Quantum theory (PHYA):...
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Postdoctoral opportunities at Rice I will be sending some emails shortly, but I wanted to point out postdoctoral opportunities here at...
a year ago
13
a year ago
I will be sending some emails shortly, but I wanted to point out postdoctoral opportunities here at Rice University. The Smalley-Curl Institute is having a competition for two two-year postdoctoral fellow slots.  Click on the link for the details.  The requirements for a...
nanoscale views
Scientific publishing - where are we going? I think it's safe to say that anyone involved in scientific publishing will tell you that it's a...
a year ago
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a year ago
I think it's safe to say that anyone involved in scientific publishing will tell you that it's a mess and the trends are worrisome.  This week, this news release/article came out about this preprint which shows a number of the issues.  In brief (not all of this is in the...
nanoscale views
Strategic planning + departmental reviews It's been a while since I've written a post about the ways of academia, so I thought it might be...
a year ago
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a year ago
It's been a while since I've written a post about the ways of academia, so I thought it might be time, though it's not exactly glamorous or exciting.  There are certain cycles in research universities, and two interrelated ones are the cycle of departmental strategic planning and...
nanoscale views
Reading material - orders of magnitude and difficult times Over the past couple of weeks (and more) I have found a number of things to read that I wanted to...
a year ago
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a year ago
Over the past couple of weeks (and more) I have found a number of things to read that I wanted to pass on.  First, if you'd like a break from the seemingly continual stream of bad news in the world and enjoy good "think like a physicist"/dimensional analysis/order of magnitude...
nanoscale views
Scientific travel Particularly in these post-pandemic, climate-change-addled, zoom-enabled times, I appreciate the...
a year ago
35
a year ago
Particularly in these post-pandemic, climate-change-addled, zoom-enabled times, I appreciate the argument that it's always worth asking, "Is this trip really necessary?"  We are in the age of remote work and zoom seminars that are attended by people from all over the world.  Is...
nanoscale views
The Nobels, physics and chemistry As you undoubtedly know, the 2023 Nobel in physics has been awarded to Pierre Agostini, Ferenc...
a year ago
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a year ago
As you undoubtedly know, the 2023 Nobel in physics has been awarded to Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz, and Anne L'Huillier, for the development of techniques associated with attosecond-scale optical pulses.  Here is the more popular write-up about this (including a good handwave...
nanoscale views
Faculty positions at Rice, + annual Nobel speculation Trying to spread the word: The Department of Physics and Astronomy at Rice University in Houston,...
a year ago
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a year ago
Trying to spread the word: The Department of Physics and Astronomy at Rice University in Houston, Texas invites applications for two tenure-track faculty positions, one experimental and one theoretical, in the area of quantum science using atomic, molecular, or optical methods....
nanoscale views
A few quick highlights It's been a very busy time, hence my lower posting frequency.  It was rather intense trying to...
a year ago
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a year ago
It's been a very busy time, hence my lower posting frequency.  It was rather intense trying to attend both the KITP conference and the morning sessions of the DOE experimental condensed matter PI meeting (pdf of agenda here).  A few quick highlights that I thought were...
nanoscale views
Meetings this week This week is the 2023 DOE experimental condensed matter physics PI meeting - in the past I’ve...
a year ago
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a year ago
This week is the 2023 DOE experimental condensed matter physics PI meeting - in the past I’ve written up highlights of these here (2021), here (2019), here (2017), here (2015), and here (2013).  This year, I am going to have to present remotely, however, because I am giving a...
nanoscale views
Things I learned at the Packard Foundation meeting Early in my career, I was incredibly fortunate to be awarded a David and Lucille Packard Foundation...
a year ago
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a year ago
Early in my career, I was incredibly fortunate to be awarded a David and Lucille Packard Foundation fellowship, and this week I attended the meeting in honor of the 35th anniversary of the fellowship program.  Packard fellowships are amazing, with awardees spanning the sciences...
nanoscale views
What is the thermal Hall effect? One thing that physics and mechanical engineering students learn early on is that there are often...
a year ago
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a year ago
One thing that physics and mechanical engineering students learn early on is that there are often analogies between charge flow and heat flow, and this is reflected in the mathematical models we use to describe charge and heat transport.  We use Ohm's law,...
nanoscale views
Some interesting recent papers - lots to ponder As we bid apparent farewell to LK99, it's important to note that several other pretty exciting...
a year ago
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a year ago
As we bid apparent farewell to LK99, it's important to note that several other pretty exciting things have been happening in the condensed matter/nano world.  Here are a few papers that look intriguing (caveat emptor:  I have not had a chance to read these in any real depth, so...
nanoscale views
Neutrality and experimental detective work One of the remarkable aspects of condensed matter physics is the idea of emergent quasiparticles,...
a year ago
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a year ago
One of the remarkable aspects of condensed matter physics is the idea of emergent quasiparticles, where through the interactions of many underlying degrees of freedom, new excitations emerge that are long-lived and often can propagate around in ways very different than their...
nanoscale views
What is a metal-insulator transition? The recent excitement about the alleged high temperature superconductor "LK99" has introduced some...
a year ago
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a year ago
The recent excitement about the alleged high temperature superconductor "LK99" has introduced some in the public to the idea of a metal-insulator or insulator-metal transition (MIT/IMT).  For example, one strong candidate explanation for the sharp drop in resistance as a function...
nanoscale views
Desirable properties for a superconductor Given the present interest, let's talk about what kind of properties one wants in a superconductor,...
a year ago
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a year ago
Given the present interest, let's talk about what kind of properties one wants in a superconductor, as some people on social media seem ready to jump straight on the "what does superconductivity mean for bitcoin?" train. First, the preliminaries.  Superconductivity is a state of...
nanoscale views
Condensed matter on the public stage, and not in a good way This week, condensed matter physics has been getting far more broad public attention than usual, and...
a year ago
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a year ago
This week, condensed matter physics has been getting far more broad public attention than usual, and while in the abstract I like our discipline getting noticed, this is definitely not how I’d have preferred it to happen. First, more fun re Ranga Dias.  Fresh off renewed...
nanoscale views
Disorganized thoughts on "Oppenheimer" I saw "Oppenheimer" today.  Spoiler warning, I suppose, though I think we all know how this story...
a year ago
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a year ago
I saw "Oppenheimer" today.  Spoiler warning, I suppose, though I think we all know how this story ends.  Just in case you were wondering, there is no post-credit scene to set up the sequel.  (For the humor-impaired: that was a joke.) The movie was an excellent piece of...
nanoscale views
What are "quantum oscillations"? For the first time in a couple of decades, I was visiting the Aspen Center for Physics, which is...
a year ago
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a year ago
For the first time in a couple of decades, I was visiting the Aspen Center for Physics, which is always a fun, intellectually stimulating experience.  (Side note: I sure hope that the rapidly escalating costs of everything in the Aspen area don't make this venue untenable in the...
nanoscale views
Molecular electronics in 2023 This past week I was fortunate to attend this meeting, the most recent in an every-few-years series...
a year ago
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a year ago
This past week I was fortunate to attend this meeting, the most recent in an every-few-years series that brings together a group of researchers interested in electronic transport in molecular systems.  This brings together physicists and chemists, and this was the first one I've...
nanoscale views
A busy and contentious week in condensed matter physics There were a couple of interesting and controversial things afoot this week in the condensed matter...
a year ago
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a year ago
There were a couple of interesting and controversial things afoot this week in the condensed matter world. There was a new preprint from the group of Prof. Hemley at the University of Illinois Chicago featuring electronic transport measurements in samples of the putative room...
nanoscale views
Food and (broadly speaking) fluid mechanics - great paper! This paper (author's website pdf here, arxiv version here) is just a spectacularly good review...
a year ago
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a year ago
This paper (author's website pdf here, arxiv version here) is just a spectacularly good review article about fluid mechanics (broadly defined to include a bit about foams and viscoelastic systems) and food/drink.  The article is broadly structured like a menu (drinks & cocktails...
nanoscale views
Some recent papers of interest A couple of recent papers that seem interesting and I need to read more closely: This paper in...
a year ago
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a year ago
A couple of recent papers that seem interesting and I need to read more closely: This paper in Nature, a collaboration between folks at Ohio University and Argonne, is a neat combination of scanning tunneling microscopy and (synchrotron-enabled) resonant x-ray absorption.  The...
nanoscale views
ARPA-E Roadshow Today, Rice hosted the ARPA-E Roadshow, a series of presentations by ARPA-E program officers, MC-ed...
a year ago
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a year ago
Today, Rice hosted the ARPA-E Roadshow, a series of presentations by ARPA-E program officers, MC-ed by the director, Prof. Evelyn Wang.   It was all about the energy transition, and it was pretty fascinating, particularly hearing from leaders of startups who were making...
nanoscale views
What is a spin glass? As mentioned previously, structural glasses are materials in which there is no periodic lattice (no...
a year ago
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a year ago
As mentioned previously, structural glasses are materials in which there is no periodic lattice (no long-range spatial order) and the building blocks get "stuck" in some configuration, kinetically unable to get to the true energetic minimum state which would almost certainly be a...
nanoscale views
What is a glass? I want to write about a recently published paper, but to do so on an accessible level, I should...
a year ago
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a year ago
I want to write about a recently published paper, but to do so on an accessible level, I should really lay some ground work first. At the primary school level, typically people are taught that there are three states of matter: solid, liquid, and gas.  (Plasma may be introduced...
nanoscale views
Anyons, simulation, and "real" systems Quanta magazine this week published an article about two very recent papers, in which different...
a year ago
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a year ago
Quanta magazine this week published an article about two very recent papers, in which different groups performed quantum simulations of anyons, objects that do not follow Bose-Einstein or Fermi-Dirac statistics when they are exchanged.  For so-called Abelian anyons (which I wrote...
nanoscale views
Michio Kaku and science popularization in the Age of Shamelessness In some ways, we live in a golden age of science popularization.  There are fantastic publications...
a year ago
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a year ago
In some ways, we live in a golden age of science popularization.  There are fantastic publications like Quanta doing tremendous work; platforms like YouTube and podcasts have made it possible for both practicing scientists and science communicators to reach enormous audiences;...
nanoscale views
Chemical potential and banana waffles The concept of chemical potential is one that seems almost deliberately obscure to many.  I’ve...
a year ago
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a year ago
The concept of chemical potential is one that seems almost deliberately obscure to many.  I’ve written about this here, and referenced this article.  What you may not realize is that the chemical potential, of water in particular, plays a crucial role in why my banana waffle...
nanoscale views
Brief items With the end of the semester approaching and various grant deadlines, it's been a very busy time. ...
a year ago
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a year ago
With the end of the semester approaching and various grant deadlines, it's been a very busy time.  Here are some items I spotted this week (some new, some old): This article from Quanta about the "Einstein tile" is great - I particularly like the animated illustration.  This...
nanoscale views
The problems and opportunities of data We live in a world of "big data", and this presents a number of challenges for how we handle this at...
a year ago
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a year ago
We live in a world of "big data", and this presents a number of challenges for how we handle this at research universities.  Until relatively recently, the domain of huge volume/huge throughput scientific data was chiefly that of the nuclear/particle physics community and then...
nanoscale views
What do we want in a conference venue? The APS March Meeting was in Las Vegas this year, and I have yet to talk to a single attendee who...
a year ago
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a year ago
The APS March Meeting was in Las Vegas this year, and I have yet to talk to a single attendee who liked that decision in hindsight.  In brief, the conference venue seemed about 10% too small (severe crowding issues in hallways between sessions); while the APS deal on hotels was...
nanoscale views
Recent RT superconductivity claim - summary page In the interests of saving people from lots of googling or scrolling through 170+ comments, here is...
a year ago
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a year ago
In the interests of saving people from lots of googling or scrolling through 170+ comments, here is a bulleted summary of links relevant to the recent claim of room temperature superconductivity in a nitrogen-doped lutetium hydride compound under pressure.   Dias's contributed...
nanoscale views
APS March Meeting 2023, Day 4 + wrapup My last day at the March Meeting was a bit scattershot, but here are a few highlights: In a...
a year ago
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a year ago
My last day at the March Meeting was a bit scattershot, but here are a few highlights: In a session about spin transport, the opening invited talk by Jiaming He was a clear discussion of recent experimental results on spin Seebeck effects in the magnetic insulator LuFeO3. The...
nanoscale views
APS March Meeting 2023, Day 3 There is vigorous discussion taking place on the Day 2 link regarding the highly controversial claim...
a year ago
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a year ago
There is vigorous discussion taking place on the Day 2 link regarding the highly controversial claim of room temperature superconductivity.   Highlights from Wednesday are a hodgepodge because of my meanderings: The session about quantum computing hardware was well attended,...
nanoscale views
APS March Meeting 2023, Day 2 I ended up spending more time catching up with people this afternoon than going to talks after my...
a year ago
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a year ago
I ended up spending more time catching up with people this afternoon than going to talks after my session ended, but here are a couple of highlights: There was an invited session about the metal halide perovskites, and there were some interesting talks.  My faculty colleague...
nanoscale views
APS March Meeting 2023, Day 1 Ahh, Las Vegas.  I will say, I think every APS March Meeting from now on should have a giant Ferris...
a year ago
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a year ago
Ahh, Las Vegas.  I will say, I think every APS March Meeting from now on should have a giant Ferris wheel right by the registration lobby.    Here are a few highlights from what I saw after I arrived around lunchtime today: Given some of my current research, I spent a fair bit...
nanoscale views
APS March Meeting 2023 - coming soon I will be attending the 2023 APS March Meeting in Las Vegas this week.  I will do my best to try to...
a year ago
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a year ago
I will be attending the 2023 APS March Meeting in Las Vegas this week.  I will do my best to try to report on some highlights daily, though that may be more challenging than usual for me this time around (looming proposal deadline that I suspect all of my condensed matter faculty...
nanoscale views
Science and how it will be practiced in the future I just registered for an event that celebrates the 35th anniversary of a particular science and...
a year ago
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a year ago
I just registered for an event that celebrates the 35th anniversary of a particular science and engineering program, and one question they posed was, to paraphrase, "Science has changed a lot in the last 35 years.  Please make three predictions about science in the next 35...
nanoscale views
Tour de force work: Bragg, diffraction, and diamond There are some examples of scientific progress that just seem so far above and beyond the norm, it's...
a year ago
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a year ago
There are some examples of scientific progress that just seem so far above and beyond the norm, it's almost jaw dropping in terms of the mental leap needed for the insight.  One example that I always liked to point out to first-year undergrads learning about gravity is Johannes...
nanoscale views
Some interesting links - useful lecture notes, videos Proposal writing, paper writing, and course prep are eating a lot of my bandwidth right now, but I...
a year ago
30
a year ago
Proposal writing, paper writing, and course prep are eating a lot of my bandwidth right now, but I wanted to share a few things: David Tong at Cambridge is a gifted educator and communicator who has written lecture notes that span a wide swath of the physics curriculum, from...
nanoscale views
Cavities and tuning physics I've written before about cavity quantum electrodynamics.  An electromagnetic cavity - a resonator...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
I've written before about cavity quantum electrodynamics.  An electromagnetic cavity - a resonator of some kind, like your microwave oven chamber is for microwaves, or like an optical cavity made using nearly perfect mirrors - picks out what electromagnetic modes are allowed...
nanoscale views
Condensed matter’s rough start I’m teaching undergrad solid-state for the first time, and it has served as a reminder of how...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
I’m teaching undergrad solid-state for the first time, and it has served as a reminder of how condensed matter physics got off the ground.  I suspect that one reason CM historically had not received a lot of respect in the early years (e.g. Pauli declaring that solid-state...
nanoscale views
News items for the new year After I was not chosen to be Speaker of the US House of Representatives, I think it’s time to...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
After I was not chosen to be Speaker of the US House of Representatives, I think it’s time to highlight some brief items: Here is a great blog post by a Rice grad alum, Daniel Gonzales, about flow to approach faculty searches.  I had written a fair bit on this a number of years...
nanoscale views
Favorite science fiction invention? In the forward-looking spirit of the New Year, it might be fun to get readers’ opinions of their...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
In the forward-looking spirit of the New Year, it might be fun to get readers’ opinions of their favorite science fiction inventions.  I wrote about favorite sci-fi materials back in 2015, but let’s broaden the field. Personally, I’m a fan of the farcaster (spoiler warning!) from...
nanoscale views
The difficult need for creativity on demand Thoughts at the end of another busy year…. Good science is a creative enterprise.  Some stereotypes...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
Thoughts at the end of another busy year…. Good science is a creative enterprise.  Some stereotypes paint most scientists as toiling away, so deeply constrained by logic that they function more like automatons grinding out the next incremental advance in a steady if slow march of...
nanoscale views
Brief items - LOC, GPT, etc. This year was a busy one and my overall posting rate is down.  Hopefully the coming year will be a...
over a year ago
33
over a year ago
This year was a busy one and my overall posting rate is down.  Hopefully the coming year will be a bit less frenetic, but who knows.  A few brief items: First, in the odd self-promotion department, this blog is officially going to be indexed by the Library of Congress as part...
nanoscale views
The fusion story of the day There is a press conference going on right now announcing a breakthrough at the National Ignition...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
There is a press conference going on right now announcing a breakthrough at the National Ignition Facility at Livermore.   The NIF is an inertial confinement fusion facility that uses 192 laser beams to compress a fuel pellet containing deuterium and tritium.  The pellet is...
nanoscale views
The wormhole kerfuffle, ER=EPR, and all that I was busy trying to finish off a grant proposal and paper revisions this week and didn't have the...
over a year ago
31
over a year ago
I was busy trying to finish off a grant proposal and paper revisions this week and didn't have the time to react in realtime to the PR onslaught surrounding the recent Nature paper by a team from Harvard, MIT, Fermilab, and Google.  There are many places to get caught up on this,...
nanoscale views
The need for energy-efficient computing Computing is consuming a large and ever-growing fraction of the world's energy capacity. I've seen...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
Computing is consuming a large and ever-growing fraction of the world's energy capacity. I've seen the essential data in this figure several times over the last few months, and it has convinced me that the need for energy-efficient computing hardware is genuinely pressing.  This...
nanoscale views
Bob Curl - it is possible to be successful and also a good person I went to a memorial service today at Rice for my late colleague Bob Curl, who died this past...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
I went to a memorial service today at Rice for my late colleague Bob Curl, who died this past summer, and it was a really nice event.  I met Bob almost immediately upon my arrival at Rice back in 2000 (though I’d heard about him from my thesis advisor, who’d met him at the Nobel...
nanoscale views
The 2022 Welch Conference The last couple of weeks have been very full.   One event was the annual Welch Foundation conference...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
The last couple of weeks have been very full.   One event was the annual Welch Foundation conference (program here).  The program chair for this one was W. E. Moerner, expert (and Nobel Laureate) on single-molecule spectroscopy, and it was really a great meeting.  I'm not just...
nanoscale views
Rice University Academy of Fellows postdoc opportunity, 2023 As I have posted in previous years, Rice has a university-wide endowed honorific postdoctoral...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
As I have posted in previous years, Rice has a university-wide endowed honorific postdoctoral program called the Rice Academy of Fellows.   Like all such things, it's very competitive. The new application listing has gone live here with a deadline of January 4, 2023. ...
nanoscale views
Materials labs of the future + cost The NSF Division of Materials Research has been soliciting input from the community about both the...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
The NSF Division of Materials Research has been soliciting input from the community about both the biggest outstanding problems in condensed matter and materials science, and the future of materials labs - what kind of infrastructure, training, etc. will be needed to address...
nanoscale views
Getting light out of plasmonic tunnel junctions - the sequel A couple of years ago I wrote about our work on "above threshold" light emission in planar metal...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
A couple of years ago I wrote about our work on "above threshold" light emission in planar metal tunnel junctions.  In that work, we showed that in a planar tunnel junction, you can apply a bias voltage \(V\) and get lots of photons out at energies quite a bit greater than...