Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Physics Pieces (Part 1)

A quick review of the week gone by...

A talk given by Olga Sikora (who worked in Nic Shannon's group in Bristol) was on spin ice and mentioned that frustration can occur as "charge frustration" as well. Professor Shannon is based in Oxford this year, and is subsequently headed to the new Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology next year.

A talk by Shivaji Sondhi presented a very interesting description of quantum liquids by considering the vortex structure induced in superfluids when coupled with real-space rotation in a bucket. Professor Sondhi was my advisor for my very first research project on the Ising model during Junior Year at Princeton.

A talk by Mark Newman on networks. Excellent for showing the application of physical insight (mainly statistical physics) into problems such as social networks, such as a simple proof of why it usually is that your friends on average have more friends than you (Ref). Professor Newman is a prolific author and did his DPhil at Oxford, co-supervised by Robin Stinchcombe and David Sherrington.

2 comments:

  1. Soon there will be Prof Darren Tan, Nobel Laureate. I don't think I can make it in time for the fields medal anymore.

    ReplyDelete
  2. On Nobel prizes, it's very interesting to read about the late John Bardeen, who won two Nobel prizes in physics.

    ReplyDelete