I’m about to set off to Boston for the APS March Meeting 2019 (March 4-8). I’ll be presenting my newest work on using infinite boundary conditions are current reservoirs for measuring steady-state currents in quantum wires using tensor network methods. My talk is at Wednesday 6 March at 8:48am in room 156C. If you want to chat with me at the March Meeting drop me a line.
After the March Meeting I’ll be visiting the Sandvik group at Boston University 11-20 March. I’m really looking forward to seeing all my old friends and colleagues at BU.
Last week I attended the NCTS-ICAM Annual Meeting and Workshop at National Tsing-Hua University (清華大學) in Hsinchu (新竹), Taiwan. It was a delightful week of presentations and discussions with condensed matter physicists from all over the world and an excellent opportunity to build my professional network here in Taiwan.
I presented my poster “Direct numerical observation of Bose-Einstein condensation of deconfined spinons” in which I use a magnetic field to induce a finite density of magnetic excitations at a deconfined quantum critical point and use thermodynamics to show that they must be deconfined spinons (an extension of Ch. 4 of my dissertation). I received some excellent feedback on my poster that will help improve my manuscript.
There were fascinating talks including David Campbell, Duncan Haldane, Nic Shannon and Suchitra Sebastian. ICAM also made the wise decision to include a panel discussion on women in physics as part of the main schedule (rather than in a parallel session or as an extra event). It was a great opportunity to hear from women physicists about the challenges they face and to get some updated data from Laura Greene (former president of APS).
Part of the conference was an excursion to 南圓 (Nanyuan), a beautiful resort in the foggy mountains near Hsinchu. We had a tour of the beautiful Chinese garden and partook in a tea ceremony.
Me (left), Duncan Haldane (center), and Nic Shannon (right) posing with the NCTS staff who worked so hard to make this workshop happen. (Photo credit: NCTS staff)
The women in physics panel at the ICAM-NCTS conference. (Photo credit: NCTS staff)
Photo of ICAM-NCTS 2019 attendees (photo credit: NCTS staff)
I’m back from almost two weeks of discussions on quantum magnetism at the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS, a branch of TIFR). I presented a poster on my latest findings on my study of the field-induced spinons at the deconfined quantum critical point and received some useful feedback that will help me put the finishing touches on the manuscript.
In addition to some great tutorials and research talks, I had some productive discussions with old collaborators, like Kedar Damle, and a chance to meet a number of new people in my field and talk physics. It was a really productive 8 days and I am now back in Taipei with renewed focus.
I couldn’t have nicer things to say about ICTS. Located an hour drive outside of Bengaluru, India, ICTS is essentially a little resort for physicists. Bengaluru is apparently blessed with perfect weather year-round, and ICTS makes the most of that weather with open-air courtyards and hallways. The campus is beautiful, modern, immaculately clean, and meticulously landscaped. The guest house was basically a hotel, and the cafeteria serves up delicious Indian cuisine. My thanks to the organizers (Subhro Bhattacharjee, Gang Chen, Zenji Hiroi, Ying-Jer Kao, SungBin Lee, Arnab Sen and Nic Shannon) as well as the ICTS staff who did such an excellent job with all the logistics. I hope to be back again for another workshop soon.
The ICTS academic block with offices and a coffee shop.
ICTS campus with the library in the center.
One of my delicious breakfasts from the ICTS cafeteria.
Looking towards the auditorium where our sessions were held.
I had a great time at the uni10 hackathon at National Tsing-Hua University last weekend. Members of the Ying-Jer Kao (NTU) and Pochung Chen (NTHU) groups presented the updates on the development of the uni10 tensor network library. Also in attendance were developers from industry (and SOLVCON) and the local python user community.
