Chapter 629 Interview with Nature Weekly

But there is no banquet in the world. After all, he is the head of the Department of Mathematics. There are still many things in Princeton waiting for Fefferman to go back to deal with.

After sending Fefferman to the airport, Lu Zhou bid farewell to Fefferman, who was walking towards the security checkpoint with his suitcase.

"Bon trip."

"I will," Fefferman continued, smiling and making a farewell gesture, "Please contact me if you find anything new."

Lu Zhou smiled and nodded.

"must."

In the next few days, Lu Zhou basically returned to the work and rest between Zhongshan International, the Institute for Advanced Study, and the office of Jinda University. Since the courses of number theory and computational materials have been completed one after another, until the exam week next month, there is nothing more troublesome on the school side.

These days, Lu Zhou is either studying his own subject, or guiding several of his students to complete their academic tasks.

To be honest, seeing the saplings he cultivated are thriving, he still feels a sense of accomplishment.

The office of several courts.

Lu Zhou called Han Mengqi to his desk.

"I have good news for you."

Seeing the mysterious expression on Lu Zhou's face, Han Mengqi asked suspiciously.

"...what good news?"

"Just this morning, I received an email from the editorial department of "ACS-Nano", and your paper has passed the review!" Speaking of this, Lu Zhou showed a smile on his face, "Congratulations, now you are also a top editor." published scholars."

The moment Han Mengqi heard the news, she was slightly taken aback, and a look of joy suddenly appeared on her face.

"real?"

"Of course it's true," Lu Zhou said with a smile, "This is the result of your hard work in the past six months... How is it going? Are you excited?"

Han Mengqi nodded excitedly.

"Hmm! Super excited!"

The impact factor of "ACS-Nano" is around 14. As one of the top journals in the field of materials science, it is not so easy to submit a manuscript.

The reviewer of Han Mengqi's paper was the associate editor Ali Javey (ali·javey), who is also a master in materials science. Lu Zhou exchanged email addresses with him at a certain academic conference.

Although there may be reasons for the rapid submission of the manuscript because of the fact that one's own name is hung on the corresponding author, the quality of the paper itself is of course beyond doubt.

After all, fame is one aspect, and the academia ultimately speaks with strength.

Seeing Han Mengqi's excited face, Lu Zhou was also sincerely happy for her.

Generally speaking, the few students he led were quite up-to-date.

In addition to Mengqi Han's paper, a paper on number theory and a paper on computational materials science by two other doctors were also published in "SIAM-review" with an impact factor of 4 and "Nano-Today" with an impact factor of 17.

I submitted a paper with an impact factor of 10, which made Wu Shuimu very happy.

Although this paper is a project on nanomaterials at the Jinling Institute for Advanced Study, and his name is somewhat suspected of "cultivating" him in this first work, he has also contributed a lot to this project.

As for He Changwen's thesis, apart from Lu Zhou's guidance a few times, it was basically completed independently.

The impact factor of mathematics journals is generally low, and the real influence is not linked to the impact factor, so the impact factor does not reflect the real level. Although "SIAM-review" is not one of the top four journals, it is considered a leader among journals in the first district according to the division of Chinese Academy of Sciences.

There is another paper by Feng Jin, and the impact factor of the submitted journal is about 1-2.

The paper is currently still in the peer review process, but the results will be available in early June.

As for the other three graduate students in mathematics and one graduate student in computational materials science who failed to complete their thesis, Lu Zhou didn't blame them too much.

After all, there is a difference in ability between people, not to mention that Jin University’s student resources cannot be compared to Princeton’s at present. He has never expected that all of his students are talented, as long as they It is enough to be able to complete the tasks assigned by oneself step by step.

At noon, I went to the cafeteria to eat a bowl of barbecue and bibimbap. When Lu Zhou returned to the office, seeing that it was almost time, he changed into a more handsome formal attire, sat on the sofa in the office, and accepted an appointment from the British "Nature Weekly" interview.

During this period of time, he received quite a few interview invitations, some from domestic media and some from abroad.

Knowing the public's curiosity about his research content, Lu Zhou selectively accepted interview appointments from some qualified media.

For example, "Nature Weekly" is one of them.

Even if it is non-academic, the professionalism of this kind of publication under the banner of "Nature" is far more reliable than that of "Daily Mail", which is a professional headline party. At least in terms of reporting academic figures, major scientific breakthroughs, etc., this kind of weekly magazine still has a certain seriousness.

When the reporter and photographer of "Nature Weekly" arrived at the number hospital, Lin Yuxiang enthusiastically invited them into the office and sat down, and then poured them two cups of coffee.

The camera was turned on, the recording pen was adjusted, and a dignified sitting posture was posed. Ms. Belinda spoke with a smile.

"Hi Mr. Lu Zhou."

"Hello."

Belinda smiled and said, "Do you still remember five years ago? We met at the CERN headquarters in Switzerland. At that time, you participated in the European Nuclear Research Conference as an intern. Because of the discovery of the characteristic peak of 750GeV I interviewed you."

Lu Zhou smiled and said, "No wonder I thought you looked familiar when you first walked in."

Belinda smiled and continued to ask: "I still remember that Professor Greer from CERN was full of praise for your talent in physics. May I ask what made you take the path of mathematics?"

"In the beginning, maybe it was just because my major was mathematics," Lu Zhou continued after thinking about it, "I became interested after in-depth research, so I came up with the idea of ​​studying."

Belinda asked in surprise, "Is that all?"

Lu Zhou smiled and nodded: "Yes, that's all."

Flipping through the shorthand book in her hand, Ms. Belinda continued: "At present, the general solution of the Yang-Mills equation has been found, and according to my understanding, there is still one most critical problem that has not been solved-namely, the mass The gap problem. Many physicists have said that whoever can solve this problem will have the hope of winning the most dazzling holy grail in modern physics... What I want to ask is, why do you say that? And, this problem is difficult where?"

This question is not easy to answer.

After all, most people don't understand what the mass gap is, let alone how to understand the difficulties.

After thinking for a moment, Lu Zhou said.

"If you want to understand the mass gap of the strong interaction, it means to explore the hadron world under the strong interaction described by the third-order special unitary group gauge field theory. For this unknown world, we use it to detect it The lowest frequency required for an energetic beam of light is the minimum mass times the speed of light squared/Planck's constant."

After a pause, Lu Zhou continued.

"Referring to the minimum mass value in the experiment, the order of magnitude of this lowest frequency is 10^24Hz, so the high degree of interaction coupling shows that the world of hadrons is completely different from the world we are familiar with. To understand the world we are not familiar with , itself is a meaningful and challenging thing, it can bring changes to our civilization, no less than the discovery of a habitable planet."

"In a nutshell, we'll figure out how massless bricks can be packed into massive particles, and how the four fundamental forces we're familiar with can come together in areas we don't understand."

Ms. Belinda continued to ask with a look of surprise on her face.

"So your goal is to unify the four fundamental forces?"

Lu Zhou smiled and said: "This is not my goal, this is the goal of the whole physics."

Ms. Belinda immediately asked: "So how do you think it will be achieved?"

Lu Zhou thought for a while and said, "Before unifying gravity with the other three fundamental forces, I think it is crucial to achieve internal unity among the three fundamental forces."

"The Yang-Mills equation is the first step towards a grand unified theory, and establishing the relationship between the strong interaction and electromagnetic interaction will become an extremely important piece of the puzzle, or the last piece of the puzzle that unifies the three fundamental forces... After all, Weinberg et al.’s unified theory of electroweakness has unified the electromagnetic interaction and the weak interaction by adding a Higgs field.”

A thoughtful expression appeared on Belinda's face, and she continued.

"So in your theory, the electromagnetic force acts like a bond that unites the weak and strong interactions?"

"Yes," Lu Zhou joked, leaning back on the chair, "and then take his two little friends to find the most unsociable gravitational force... But I guess, I probably have no hope in this life Just see the day."