New Physical Review Letters Paper is out

Researchers at Washington State University use Patterns to set Limits on Light/Matter Interactions

 

Physicists Rick Lytel, Sean Mossman, Ethan Crowell and Mark Kuzyk at Washington State University are developing general principles that can be applied to making new materials that harness light.   Beefed up light-matter interactions can be used to make higher-contrast medical images, more effectively burn cancer cells while leaving healthy ones intact, suppress the twinkle of stars in telescopes, supercharge the internet, make lasers more colorful and effortlessly process complex images.  The new has appeared in the August 18^th 2017 issue of Physical Review Letters.

Researchers typically model each new candidate material with complex equations that are difficult to interpret.  Rather than evaluate specific materials using this obtuse formalism, the WSU team instead studies the structure of the equations to search for patterns that hint at the largest possible response.  Since the equations are intractable, the researchers instead throw metaphoric darts at the target, but constrain the trajectories using the sum rules -- physical laws that must be obeyed by a quantum system.  After many throws, and applying a filter that takes into account the effect of molecule size, a pattern comes into focus.

The pattern reveals the true fundamental limits to be about 30% lower than previously calculated and suggests that a potentially new design paradigm will be required to get to the limit.  Ongoing work is aimed at translating the physicists’ esoteric findings into rules that can be used by chemists, materials scientists and nanotechnologists to make better materials.

The present work resolves several puzzles.  The theory of the fundamental limits of light/matter interaction strength predicted a ceiling that was almost 50% higher than all theoretical models, suggesting that exotic materials were needed to bridge the gap.  The new work shows that such unphysical quantum systems are not required to reach the limits and that exotic systems will likely obey the same limit.  Furthermore, infinities in the older incomplete theory – warning flags in physics of theoretical pathologies -- have been excluded by the new results.

While the present work has practical implications for new technologies, the search for patterns generated by constrained random sampling is a powerful tool that can be applied to understanding the underlying structure of complex theories.  In future work, the WSU researchers plan to apply this approach to a holistic investigation of the combined properties of a material needed for specific applications, and identifying the path for getting there.

What Ever Happened to Civili Discourse

I am getting so numb to the rhetoric on all the news networks that I have forgotten the civility of those Obama years that Trump supporters and many republicans point to as the evil Obama era.  He was called a liar, illegitimate, and far worse, but remained a gentleman.  The other night, MSNBC posted a video of the then new commander in chief in 2010 taking questions from the audience. Below is an excerpt.


Obama reacts with polite banter to Wall Street guy Anthony Scaramucci (Trump's new white house communications director), who is critical of Obama's handling of the aftermath of the burst housing bubble.  There is no name calling.  Obama sates the facts (which are verifiable) in support of his reasoning to tax the wealthy at the same rate as their low-paid secretaries. Scaramucci is ashamed by the facts.

This is how issues should be debated.  I would feel far more comfortable with Trump's presidency if he gave an open town hall meeting (not a rally aimed at his diehard supporters) were he responds to critics with reasoned answers.  Instead, he rants about crowd size, inflates his accomplishments by counter-factually huge amounts, and makes disparaging remarks about anyone who disagrees with his warped view of reality.  This in turn releases a frenzied response from liberals who are attacked by conservatives in an endless and escalating cycle.  This must stop.

Let's come together as Americans who love the freedoms and institutions that make this country great and debate the issues with civility, calling upon facts to make measured arguments.  Let's quote legitimate sources rather than ideological echo chambers.  Let's respect each other's views without dismissing our ideological opposites.  We can disagree and debate, but let's not call each other names or brand members of a group by their most extreme members.

I challenge all of us to start an honest and sincere grass roots movement of civil discourse where everyone can voice his or her own opinion, not to convince others, but to bring clarity to the motivations of those with whom we disagree.  Hell with our leaders; let's resolve our differences at the local level, where it matters most, and let it percolate upward to those who represent us.

I strongly urge newspapers and other media to play a more active role in mediated debate.  Encourage pairs of writers or bloggers with opposing views to weigh in on the same issue, perhaps even encouraging a back-and-forth exchange, calling upon fact checkers to enforce honesty.  If we're lucky, perhaps civil discourse will once again become the norm.   We can accomplish so much more if we work together and use reality, peppered with reasoned opinion, as the the basis for making decisions.