Transmission Coefficient
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TRANSMISSION COEFFICIENT*
A few days ago, I found myself at a seminar where an invited speaker was discussing a system with no conservation laws and the consequences of that with regards to the spread of operators. About twenty minutes in, when the slides became slightly too technical, I got off track, spaced out and just started thinking about how weird it is to even have to consider a system with no conserved quantities and how bad my intuition for time evolution of such a system was. It weirded me out a bit. I completely failed to realize how little the words “spread of operators” meant outside of that lecture hall nor did it occur to me that even devoting fifty minutes to a discussion of abstract objects in an abstract vector space was actually in itself a pretty particular occurrence. In a room full of theorists, some interrupting to ask questions and make comments, it was pretty easy to forget just how niche some of our concerns can be.
More recently, I was a part of another discussion where a group of physicists tried to understand a psychology paper assessing a particular type of training some other students had received concerning implicit bias and racial stereotyping. Almost everyone bemoaned the fact that we did not invite an actual psychologist to walk us through the paper. Many admitted to not having read the whole paper because it had so many parts and so much jargon. A large part of the following ninety minutes of discussion was underscored by an acknowledgement that science is seemingly more “fuzzy” outside of physics and we, the physicists, distinctly do not like that. (“What was their rigorous model anyway?”) Regardless, a fair amount of philosophizing and determined making of strong statements followed. Participants dismissed tests and measures they were mostly unfamiliar with, causality was widely questioned and at some point, even the biggest ‘big picture’ and issues of legislating to change attitudes got brought in. It was an animated discussion to say the least.
In both of these two discussions specialized knowledge and a fairly narrowly focused skill set were seemingly necessary prerequisites. In one case, many participants did have the appropriate training, in the other almost no one did. In either case just walking in from the street would probably leave one confused and not exactly encouraged to participate. In both cases, people spoke up.
To a large extent, many of us are simply used to having somewhat cerebral, overly abstract discussion because that is what so much of our education and training has led us to. We do it almost by default. As academics, we engage in jargon heavy conversation without thinking about it because being fluent in the correct verbiage is necessary for the furthering of our work. Consequently, we easily lose sight of how insular this mode of interaction can be. The systems that we work on becomes so ingrained in our minds that we start to see them as near-trivial and many researchers readily describe problems they are working on as simple. We live and breathe the subject matter so, not surprisingly, it stops seeming complicated or complex. The fact that we so often talk about intuition only serves to highlight this – there is nothing intuitive about, say, a certain type of a two-point correlation in a system without long range coherence if one has not already spent years studying phenomena that those terms apply to. For most of those outside of our tightly-knit research circles our notion of intuition is anything but intuitive.
We are often aware of this and it often causes frustration among our ranks. Our students struggle with problems that do not explicitly include numbers and we look down on their attempts to just match any problem to a formula of some sort instead of engaging in ‘deeper’ physical reasoning. Our parents have long stopped asking about our research because they do not understand it, and listening to another long explanation about it all actually being 'not that fancy' takes a lot of time and energy. We turn to each other to gripe about the use of the phrase ‘quantum’ in TV shows and pseudo-medical drivel and the fact that everyone thinks you have to be a genius to be a physicist. It is not exactly a secret that a lot of our work just doesn’t translate well once it leaves the confines of invited seminars and peer reviewed specialty journals.
Thinking about this in terms of how my own modes of interaction have changed, I am struck by how far I have seemingly come. My intuition may still often fall short but I have become conversant in topics I could barely grasp as an undergraduate and with each year of my training I feel more suited to ask meaningful questions in some of these talks that somehow always cut into my lunchtime. It may seem silly to think that it took until years into my graduate career to feel a smidgeon of confidence in wielding around jargon but the truth is that behind every new buzz word there are droves of old papers, complex claims and equally beautiful and convoluted proofs and experimental observations. Being able to participate in a discussion of specific, focused academic works takes a lot more preparation than simply skimming a few pages. It is easy to forget that once the buzz words get completely embedded in the language you use every day.
While this may not come across as a particularly shocking insight, it seems like we still tend to forget it when it comes to assessing, or simply talking about, work that is not quite our specialty. Despite the fact that our intuition took years to build we, more often than not, find it proper to apply it to subjects that were not necessarily a part of that building process. Even the most minor successes in our narrow, specialized work somehow embolden us to be very harsh judges of the work done by others. We declare something ‘bad science’ without questioning whether our metric for ‘good’ is well-defined or universal enough. And trying to think of a system of study in a completely different discipline should be so much weirder than thinking about an odd system where no quantities are conserved.
Among so much conversation about anti-scientific though and rise in anti-intellectualism it is possibly strange to think that any of us should be encouraged to be critical of how we apply ‘science’ to everything around us and not just our research topics. At the same time, this naïve idea that there is only one kind of rationality and only one set of tools that can be smoothly transformed to attack any problem lacks a staggering amount of nuance. Even more importantly, the assumption that we, as scientists, possess such a skill seems to be deeply ingrained in ‘scientist’ or, in my case, ‘physicist’ as an identity. As with many other identities, this makes us fiercely protective and less likely to see any shortcomings. When we put down the work done by others based on comparison with our own work, or some idealized version of it, we reinforce our vision of ourselves as the super-certain polymaths in the tradition of Newton or Galileo. And we make it that much more difficult for anyone from the ‘outside’ to engage with our work or solicit our engagement with theirs. This includes other scientists but also policy makers and likely a lot of people that hold the right to vote.
As in a lot of STEM fields, physicists are having more and more conversations about the ways in which we shape our communities, about whether we are actually welcoming of the diversity we seek, and the possible reasons for the barriers to entry into our field having remained so high for certain groups of people. It would be unfair to say that the answer to these questions comes down solely to us using too much jargon and being too quick to tear apart other sciences – something that we often do not necessarily because of knowledge but rather some sort of argument inertia that makes it difficult for us to stop once we start ‘rolling’. The reasons for the demographic make-up of our discipline and its perception in public are many and they are most certainly too complex to tackle at once. At the same time, being more cognizant of the way we talk and the way we judge is a skill that may apply beyond departmental seminars and reading groups one can squeeze in in-between lunch and coffee hour. As people we can often benefit from questioning why we judge certain things instantaneously and how our judgements can relate to our own sense of self. As scientists, trying to further overall human knowledge and hoping that that knowledge will be informative and useful to everyone around us, we should make it a habit to step away from the jargon and occasionally acknowledge that excelling in one argument does not necessarily make us extremely fluent in all others. At the end of the day there is a large intersection between being a scientist and being a person anyway.
Best,
Karmela
*In classical mechanics, a particle encountering a potential barrier (such as an actual physical wall) typically experiences a collision and simply ‘bounces off’ or reflects. In quantum mechanics tunneling through such, classically forbidden, barriers is possible. More precisely, a quantum mechanical object is described by a wavefunction rather than being treated as strictly localized and some of that waveform can ‘spill’ into the barrier. While the particle will rarely truly be fully inside of the barrier, the probability of that happening can be non-zero. This process is referred to as quantum tunneling and it is utilized in electronic components such as tunnel diodes or in scanning tunneling microscopes that can, consequently, image materials at the atomic level. The transmission coefficient expresses the probability that a particle will ‘make it’ through the barrier.
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ABOUT THIS WEEK
LISTENING: This episode of Inquiring Minds about a paid climate change critic turned climate activist is a particularly striking example of where examining the way we talk about science can take one, and I was fascinated by hearing someone talk about genuinely changing their mind – it just seems like we don’t see much of that anymore. On the more sweet and nostalgic side of thinking about ways in which people communicate, this episode of the Allusionist about letter writing was really heart-warming. Finally, this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, some of the best educational yet entertaining (or maybe vice versa) content creators out there, called Science Communication Breakdown is quite topical. (And if you are familiar with any good podcasts hosted by actual practicing scientists please let me know, I’d love to hear what those conversations sound like.)
On the music side of things I somehow fell into listening to this Uriah Heep record a lot this week and it is so delightfully cheesy and painfully catchy that I’m almost done convincing myself that The Wizard and Rainbow Demon are actually great songs, just to justify how many times I have listened to them by now.
LEARNING: This was another fairly busy week, starting with my having spent Saturday morning at a local workshop on the interplay of topology and quantum chaos and ending with 5pm Skype meetings on a Friday afternoon. The workshop was really interesting despite my knowledge of the subject matter being very slim, and most of my meetings this week proved rather productive: after two weeks of careful writing and editing, one of my papers will be re-submitted for publication in the next few days which is rather exciting and my advisor has actively started working on wrapping up another potential publication by the end of the year. Additionally, I am still scrambling to read as many old papers as I can about quasiperiodic systems, quasicrystals and the Hofstadter butterfly in the hope of starting a new line of research within my group. Between me and one of my coworkers, we have amassed quite a few facts and questions and I am excited to see what we decide to focus on. It feels great to be excited about plunging deeper into a new project.
On Monday, I gave a lecture in my advisor’s class while she was traveling and got to talk about two-level systems and quantum teleportation. These are not topics that my work has involved all too deeply and I do not think I can explain them as well as an expert could, but lecturing is always an experience that I appreciate. One of the students approached me after class with extra questions and that in itself feels like a success.
READING: On Saturday afternoon, I finally found some time to catch up on reading and finished the first collected volume of Jonathan Hickman’s sci-fi-western comic East of West. I recently revisited the Supercontext episode discussing this work and all the talk about the four horsemen of the apocalypse mixed with robots and cowboy-like shoot-outs, set to the background of some intricate alternative history world building, made it sound like a good idea to give this series a shot. While it is hard to judge a comic by what is objectively just a few introductory issues, I am definitely hoping to get my hands on more of it. The story is not as emotionally resonant or subtly profound as some of my favorite comics can be but the premise is strange and fun and the art is very much worth lingering on. I’ve always been sort of weak for sci-fi cowboys anyway, even when one of them turns out to be Death.
EATING: It has been a pretty typical week in my kitchen: I made some noodles with roasted and steamed vegetables, a butternut squash, kale, carrot and red lentil soup, and some variations on burrito bowls and tacos loaded with kale, beans and more roasted vegetables. To some extent, the recipe I am sharing below is a departure from my usual style but it is also easy, quick and very much comforting. It is similar to an eggplant parm but way more lazy while still keeping the flavor profile that distinctly reminds me of home. I made it with vegan mozzarella shreds (they were surprisingly good) but if you are eating dairy definitely top it with ‘real’ mozzarella slices (the American way) or some shredded gouda (like anyone back home might).
For roughly four servings you will need:
1 medium sized eggplant, cut into bite-sized cubes (unpeeled)
2 cans of tomatoes stewed with garlic, basil and oregano
1 medium yellow onion, finely diced
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 cup shredded vegan or dairy cheese
Salt and pepper to taste
For serving: parsley, red pepper flakes, potato wedges, pasta or crusty bread
Heat the oil in a cast iron skillet* and add onions. Sauté for a few minutes then add the cubed eggplant and season with a pinch of salt. Sauté for another 5-7 minutes, until the onion is soft and translucent and the eggplant has released some water.
Add the tomatoes together with the liquid from the cans, mix well, season more if necessary and let simmer for 10-12 minutes, until most of the liquid has evaporated, stirring occasionally. Turn on the broiler in you oven.
Top the skillet with cheese and put in the oven, under the broiler for 4-5 minutes just so the cheese starts to bubble.
Cut into quarters and serve warm, over potatoes or pasta, topped with finely chopped parsley and red pepper flakes.
* If you do not have a cast iron skillet or something similarly oven-proof, once the eggplant, tomato and onion mixture has simmered long enough for most liquid to have evaporated transfer it to a small casserole dish, top with cheese and then broil.
Tips: Substitute zucchini or yellow squash for eggplant if you find the latter to be bitter. Mix in some spinach (2-3 cups) before topping with cheese to add more greens. Use homemade tomato sauce or even fresh chopped tomatoes and spices – the steps would be the same but getting all of the water from the tomatoes to evaporate will take longer. Skip the carbs and serve with a side-salad (I’m imagining some arugula and cherry tomatoes).