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Kurt E. Oughstun() wrote really nice book on "Electromagnetic and Optical pulse propagation", very much recommended.
Aug 27, 2013
Jul 7, 2013
First Bachelor thesis student finished
Last Friday, my first bachelor student Sander has successfully defended his bachelor thesis.
I am very happy to work with him, and together with him and other colleagues we are able to demonstrate an idea I proposed.
He is both curious and diligent, reminding me of the famous phrase of Zen: 'Never forget the beginner's mind'(in chinese: 不忘初心).
I am very happy to work with him, and together with him and other colleagues we are able to demonstrate an idea I proposed.
He is both curious and diligent, reminding me of the famous phrase of Zen: 'Never forget the beginner's mind'(in chinese: 不忘初心).
Jul 2, 2013
Nice book by Jean Bladel: Singular electromagnetic fields and sources
Electromagnetic theory is a quite broad research area, and forms the basis in understanding a wide branch of scientific phenomena, and consequently you can find lots of books using EM theory as their theoretical basics, and the main topics can diverges drastically.
Interestingly, this book by Jean Bladel: Singular electromagnetic fields and sources, aims to summarize a group of problems one may encounter in this area, the 'source/geometrical singularities', one common example is the Green's function which no one can escape when jumping into this area.
It is a very nice companion book as it aims, which provides with a nice read, and I would like to share with you.
Interestingly, this book by Jean Bladel: Singular electromagnetic fields and sources, aims to summarize a group of problems one may encounter in this area, the 'source/geometrical singularities', one common example is the Green's function which no one can escape when jumping into this area.
It is a very nice companion book as it aims, which provides with a nice read, and I would like to share with you.
Apr 17, 2013
Prefaces of a researcher
Knowledge is of great importance for our society, Nobody (or at least not so many) would doubt it any more. Techniques have made knowledge easily accessible to more and more people, just as some said before:"The techniques possibly make a fool of this generation more knowledgeable than genius of last generation"
But knowledge doesn't come from nothing. Here come the researchers, often at the frontiers of knowledge, providing original new data or new perspectives of our world.
People often forget that behind those 'cold' data/theories, there exist the researchers with beating hearts. There are not so many places where a researcher could post his/her opinion about researches themselves, or unfortunately, not every researcher is necessarily a good writer at the same time.
Of course, time has left us with some of sparkling masterpieces, a nice written book or research paper or device. J.M. Ziman's book "Principles of the Theory of Solids" is of course of this kind. Even from its preface, you can learn so much about his opinion on writing/acquiring scientific knowledge. He was aiming to write a book full of ideas, instead of a collection of facts or complex formulas, which would distract the readers away from the science's hard core. Isn't it the very lack of many scientific publications?
Anyway, I invite you with the preface of this true researcher, and hope it is inspiring for you as well. ---Lei, @Delft Link to the Preface of J.M. Ziman's book The link from the publisher is broken, you may search online about this book's preface, it is worth to read.
But knowledge doesn't come from nothing. Here come the researchers, often at the frontiers of knowledge, providing original new data or new perspectives of our world.
People often forget that behind those 'cold' data/theories, there exist the researchers with beating hearts. There are not so many places where a researcher could post his/her opinion about researches themselves, or unfortunately, not every researcher is necessarily a good writer at the same time.
Of course, time has left us with some of sparkling masterpieces, a nice written book or research paper or device. J.M. Ziman's book "Principles of the Theory of Solids" is of course of this kind. Even from its preface, you can learn so much about his opinion on writing/acquiring scientific knowledge. He was aiming to write a book full of ideas, instead of a collection of facts or complex formulas, which would distract the readers away from the science's hard core. Isn't it the very lack of many scientific publications?
Anyway, I invite you with the preface of this true researcher, and hope it is inspiring for you as well. ---Lei, @Delft Link to the Preface of J.M. Ziman's book The link from the publisher is broken, you may search online about this book's preface, it is worth to read.
Jan 16, 2013
Jan 9, 2013
NanoMeta
I have finished the NanoMeta Conference in Seefeld, Austria. I am really inspired by many of the talks given there, thus it is really worthwhile to broadcast it a bit.
The conference is held in the beautiful Seefeld in Tirol area.
You can find the program contents on this website> http://www.nanometa.org/.
I have also made a list of some of my favorite talks or posters during last week> NanoMeta_talks.
You can find the program contents on this website> http://www.nanometa.org/.
I have also made a list of some of my favorite talks or posters during last week> NanoMeta_talks.
Jan 3, 2013
NanoMeta2013 Day1
From today on, I have been in the conference NanoMeta2013 which is organized of European Physics Society. (it is quite interesting when I see the poster in front of the congress that the EPS is a 'Grass Root' organisation. the 'Grass Root', 草根 in Chinese, simply meaning ordinary people who do not claim superior power, etc. but gathering together can make an important influence on this society.)
The Conference is kicked off by a plenary talk by Uwe Kreibig on extensions of Mie theory due to Mie's incapability to explain many of the experiments in the area of nano-plasmonics. To Uwe, the field of 'plasmonics' is not new at all. Many of the Mie's problem lie in the fact that Mie has adopted bulk permittivity of the material for the sphere, actually the spherical surface has a strong influence on the electronic response which can not be exactly described by the bulk.
He is the author of a book:
The Conference is kicked off by a plenary talk by Uwe Kreibig on extensions of Mie theory due to Mie's incapability to explain many of the experiments in the area of nano-plasmonics. To Uwe, the field of 'plasmonics' is not new at all. Many of the Mie's problem lie in the fact that Mie has adopted bulk permittivity of the material for the sphere, actually the spherical surface has a strong influence on the electronic response which can not be exactly described by the bulk.
He is the author of a book:
Optical Properties of Metal Clusters.
The section 'Quantum Plasmonics' in the morning leads to a strong debate on the methods of modelling sub-nm plasmonic gaps. The 'Quantum' plasmonics is mainly explaining the plasmonic effects by Quantum Mechanics. Classical electromagnetic theory by using bulk properties of materials will predict infinite field enhancement for a infinitesimal metallic tip, but from quantum physics, we can know this can not be true since the Pauli exclusion principle of the electrons. This is effect is need to take into consideration when tip/gap is below 1 nm.
Stephen Maier presented the non-locality theory for sub-nm tips. The non-locality theory is quite popular in recent years, and have been used in publications of F. Javier García de Abajo, D.R. Smith, S.A. Maier, et al.. The basic idea behind it is to introduce an 'electronic friction' in describing the collective oscillation of the electrons.
Javier Aizpurua claims today that we should be cautious in applying the 'hydrodynamic' model of the electrons, since it has a failure history in describing previous surface physics, and will possibly result in the same consequence in describing closed surfaces- the area of plasmonics. Javier and his collegues has developed an alternative method-- 'Time-dependent density functional theory', which originates from quantum theory.
I have expected more on Stephen Maier's presentation about broadband plasmonic antennas for SEIRS, but unfortunately he didn't go very deep into this part.
The talk of Frank Neubrech is quite nice as well.