Archives

April 2024

  1. Expt 10) Antiferromagnetism — the original “hidden order”
  2. Expt 9) Soft phonons at continuous structural phase transitions

March 2024

  1. Expt 8) Metal-insulator transitions
  2. Expt 7) Resistance minimum and the Kondo effect
  3. Expt 6) Superfluidity in 4He
  4. Expt 5) Meissner-Ochsenfeld effect and, separately, persistent currents

February 2024

  1. Expt 4) Electrical noise is quantified in 1928
  2. Expt 3) Electron diffraction
  3. Expt 2) X-ray diffraction from crystals
  4. Expt 1) Superconductivity in Hg in 1911
  5. Landmark experiments in condensed matter physics

October 2021

  1. Coherent phonons: mechanisms, phases and symmetry

September 2021

  1. No longer naked: IR selection rules and greenhouse gases
  2. Naked planets

June 2021

  1. Decoherence does not imply wavefunction “collapse”

September 2020

  1. Symmetry, selection rules and reduction to a bare-bones model

June 2020

  1. List of actions
  2. Meissner effect as amplified atomic diamagnetism
  3. Listening

May 2020

  1. Slight detour

March 2020

  1. Environmental negligence part 1: Leaded gasoline

December 2019

  1. Whence we know the photon exists

August 2019

  1. The photoelectric effect does not imply photons

August 2018

  1. Critical Slowing Down

February 2018

  1. Pictures of Band Theory: A real space view of where bands and band gaps come from

January 2018

  1. Bands Aren’t Only For Crystalline Solids

November 2017

  1. Graduate Student Stipends

October 2017

  1. On Scientific Inevitability

September 2017

  1. Mercury

July 2017

  1. Response and Dissipation: Part 1 of the Fluctuation-Dissipation Theorem
  2. Research Topics and the LAQ Method

June 2017

  1. DIY Garage Work

May 2017

  1. Jahn-Teller Distortion and Symmetry Breaking

April 2017

  1. The Physicist’s Proof II: Limits and the Monty Hall Problem
  2. An Undergraduate Optics Problem – The Brewster Angle
  3. Spot the Difference
  4. Book Review – The Gene

March 2017

  1. YouTube Yikes!
  2. Zener’s Electrical Breakdown Model
  3. Mott Switches and Resistive RAMs

February 2017

  1. Discovery vs. Q&A Experiments
  2. An Excellent Intro to Physical Science
  3. Some Gems
  4. Nonlinear Response and Harmonics

January 2017

  1. Citizen First, Scientist Second
  2. Electron-Hole Droplets
  3. Disorganized Reflections
  4. Landau Theory and the Ginzburg Criterion

December 2016

  1. Holiday Puzzle
  2. Fractional Quasiparticles and Reality
  3. A Staple of the Italian Diet
  4. Strontium Titanate — A Historical Tour
  5. Wannier-Stark Ladder, Wavefunction Localization and Bloch Oscillations

November 2016

  1. Consistency in the Heirarchy
  2. The Struggle
  3. Kapitza-Dirac Effect
  4. Diversity in and of Physics

October 2016

  1. Halloween Humor…
  2. Bohr-van Leeuwen Theorem and the Micro/Macro Disconnect
  3. LST Relation – The Physical Picture
  4. Too Close to Home
  5. An Interesting Research Avenue, an Update and a Joke

September 2016

  1. Gibbs Paradox and Epicycles
  2. Lunar Eclipse and the 22 Degree Halo
  3. Precision in Many-Body Systems
  4. On Science and Meaning

August 2016

  1. Coupled and Synchronized Metronomes
  2. Acoustic Plasmon
  3. Trite but True
  4. Data Representation and Trust
  5. Drought
  6. What Life is Like in Grad School…
  7. Field Biologists
  8. Friedel Sum Rule and Phase Shifts

July 2016

  1. Ruminations on Raman
  2. Goodhart’s Law Gone Wrong…
  3. Goodhart’s Law and Citation Metrics
  4. Approximate Humor
  5. Transistors, Logic and Abstraction
  6. Angular Momentum and Harmonic Oscillators
  7. Correlated Electrons GRC

June 2016

  1. Schrodinger’s Cat and Macroscopic Quantum Mechanics
  2. The Mystery of URu2Si2 – Experimental Dump
  3. Crises in Confidence
  4. Neither Energy Gap Nor Meissner Effect Imply Superflow
  5. Science for Science’s Sake

May 2016

  1. Breadth Vs. Depth
  2. Lift Off
  3. European League Underdogs
  4. Diffraction, Babinet and Optical Transforms
  5. With Great Beam Time Comes Great Humor
  6. Broken Symmetry and Degeneracy
  7. John Oliver on Science
  8. A View From an X-ray Beam
  9. Phase Difference After Resonance

April 2016

  1. SciPost
  2. Loudspeaker Crossover
  3. Is it really as bad as they say?
  4. What’s NDT Been Up To?
  5. Timing
  6. A First-Rate Experiment: The Damon-Eshbach Mode
  7. Flash Boys: A Few Lessons

March 2016

  1. A Graphical Depiction of Linear Response
  2. Paradigm Shifts and the Scourge of Bibliometrics
  3. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of STEM
  4. Gravitational Waves Made Easy
  5. Private Sector Careers from a Physics PhD
  6. Perception

Feb 2016

  1. The Most Surprising Consequences of Quantum Mechanics
  2. A Matter of Definitions
  3. A Glimpse into the Renormalization Group
  4. Just a little thought of Aharonov-Bohm Destruction of Superconductivity
  5. Beam Time Humor
  6. Visualization and Analogies
  7. History and a Q&A Approach
  8. Reproducing Experiments
  9. A Physicist’s Proof

January 2016

  1. Neil Degrasse Tyson Vs. Rapper B.o.B
  2. Science and Hype
  3. Origin of the solitary wave
  4. An Integral from the SSH Model
  5. Envisioning the Future Technological Landscape
  6. Reflecting on General Ideas
  7. Sounding Out Krakatoa
  8. What is Scientific Consensus?
  9. Cost of a College Education

December 2015

  1. The Unswattable
  2. A Much Needed Textbook Overhaul
  3. The Relationship Between Causality and Kramers-Kronig Relations
  4. Interactions, Collective Excitations and a Few Examples
  5. Matthias’ List — Check it Twice
  6. On the Lighter Side…
  7. Some Words on Sum Rules

November 2015

  1. Misconduct and The Wire
  2. Neutron Scattering and Cuprates
  3. Hunches and Feelings
  4. Balibar and his Beef with Science Magazine’s Depiction of a BEC
  5. Why Was BCS So Important?
  6. In Favor of Graduate Years in Lab Versus Data-Taking at a Synchrotron
  7. Excitons in Cuprous Oxide

October 2015

  1. Macroscopic Wavefunctions, Off-Diagonal Long Range Order and U(1) Symmetry Breaking
  2. A Critical Ingredient for Cooper Pairing in Superconductors within the BCS Picture
  3. Another Lesson from the Coupled Oscillator: Fano Lineshape
  4. The truth we all know but agree not to talk about
  5. A Rather Illuminating Experiment Using Ultrafast Lasers
  6. Things Everyone has Thought of, or Actually done, on an Exam
  7. Do We Effectively Disseminate “Gems of Insight”?
  8. The Shortcoming of Our Experimental Probes
  9. Some Questions that Arose During My Graduate Years

September 2015

  1. Does Frivolity Border on the Edge of Creativity?
  2. Condensed Matter Physics in the Eyes of the Public: A Note from N.P. Armitage
  3. Lessons from the Coupled Oscillator
  4. Why are the quantum mechanical effect of sound observed in most solids but not in most liquids?
  5. What Happens in 2D Stays in 2D.
  6. Net Attraction à la Bardeen-Pines and Kohn-Luttinger
  7. Draw me a picture of a Cooper Pair
  8. Guest Post
  9. So Much for New Principles at Higher Scales…
  10. General Aspects of Topology in Quantum Mechanics

August 2015

  1. Thoughts on Consistency and Physical Approximations
  2. Potential Women Nobelists
  3. A Plea for More Plots of the Energy Loss Function
  4. Bardeen, CDWs and Macroscopic Quantum Phenomena
  5. Toyota, General Motors and the Quest for Quality
  6. Excitonic Insulator
  7. Transition Metal Dichalcogenide CDWs
  8. Lost in Translation
  9. The Prescience of Ginzburg
  10. Plasmons of a Luttinger Liquid
  11. What DO We Know About High Tc?

July 2015

  1. Kohn Anomalies and Fermi Surfaces
  2. Private Communication
  3. Screening, Plasmons and LO-TO Splitting: One Last Time
  4. Emergence is about the failure of upward heritability
  5. Transport Signatures in Charge Density Wave Systems
  6. Let there be (THz) light
  7. Frank Wilczek’s Concept of Upward Inheritance
  8. Metrics Subject to Manipulation
  9. Quantized Vortices in Superfluid 4He
  10. Theory of Everything – Laughlin and Pines
  11. An Important Note on Cuprates
  12. Modern Theory of Polarization
  13. Just a Little Thought on TKNN
  14. Social and Moral Responsibility of a Scientist
  15. Physics Over Formalism

June 2015

  1. Staying cool this summer
  2. Merchants of Doubt
  3. A Little More on LO-TO Splitting
  4. Plasmons, the Coulomb Interaction and a Gap
  5. Neil deGrasse Tyson on NASA Funding
  6. Hume’s Uniformity of Nature
  7. Spin Fluctuations in the Cuprates
  8. It’s Not Just a (Berry) Phase
  9. Sonoluminescence
  10. Picasso’s Work Explored by Infrared and X-ray Radiation
  11. Unusual Properties of Rare Earth Tritellurides
  12. Declining Basic Science in the US
  13. Insights from the Cooper Problem
  14. Avoided Crossings, Level Repulsion or Anti-Crossing

May 2015

  1. Beckett and Science
  2. What THE WIRE Taught Me About Science
  3. Floquet States on Topological Insulator Surfaces
  4. Was the Higgs Boson Discovered in 1980?
  5. How do we define states of matter?
  6. Battle of the Public Physicists
  7. Open-Access Publications
  8. Plastic Fantastic
  9. Sign problems, Terry Tau, and open science
  10. The Value of “Wasting Time”
  11. Do “Theorems” in Condensed Matter Physics Limit the Imagination?
  12. The Embarrassing Scarcity of Women in Our Field
  13. Density Wave with d-Form Factor an Answer to the Mysterious Pseudogap?
  14. The Value of a Null Result II
  15. The Value of a Null Result
  16. Data and Plots for the Public
  17. Simple, Beautiful and Decisive

April 2015

  1. The Idea Factory
  2. A Universe in Every Solid