Orion Crest, Series_2

Chapter 38: Fusion begins with superconductivity

　　Recently another sensational event happened in the maths community, and its influence was not only in the academic, but even spread beyond it.

　　"Professor, the Riemann Conjecture has been proved?!" In the office of the Institute for Advanced Studies, Hardy, who was sitting in front of the computer, suddenly used a surprised voice and almost shout out.

　　As if he had discovered a new continent, Hardy said excitedly, "I saw it on the famous online maths community 'Mathoverflow', and it is said that Sir Michael Atiyah of Cambridge University claimed to have proved the Riemann Conjecture using a very simple method and will be giving a lecture at the Heidelberg Laureate Forum."

　　After hearing Hardy's words, Orion laughed and said in a joking tone. "If he does complete the proof, he will undoubtedly become the greatest mathematician of this century."

　　Hardy: " Are you optimistic about his proof?"

　　Orion did not answer the question directly, but simply expressed his opinion. "Sir Atiyah is a very distinguished scholar and a double winner of the Abel Prize and the Fields Prize, but the old man is now 89 years old ......, and to be honest it's difficult."

　　In fact, Atiyah is definitely not the first scholar to claim to have proved the Riemann Conjecture. Around '04 Professor de-Branges, a well-known scholar in the field of number theory, also claimed to have solved the Riemann Conjecture and caused quite a stir at the time, but unfortunately it was not recognised by the mathematical community. A little earlier, even Godfrey Harold had claimed to have proved the puzzle.

　　Hardy hesitated and continued, "But ...... he is Sir Atiyah, a double winner of the Abel Prize and the Fields Medal, would he make such a claim if he wasn't completely sure?"

　　Hearing this, Orion smiled and said in a pleasant manner, "My dear Hardy, if you intend to become a scholar, then you have to remember that medals are glory, but they are only glory. Or in other words, it is precisely because the mathematical community has awarded him these two honours that he is all the more deserving of responding to people's well-reasoned queries."

　　Facing Hardy's enquiring gaze, Orion paused for a moment and continued.

　　"And compared to the Riemann Conjecture, I'm more interested in knowing the status of the negative proof given by Sir Atiyah as to whether or not there is a complex structure on the six-dimensional sphere S^6."

　　Hardy: "...... Complex structure on the six-dimensional sphere S^6?"

　　Orion nodded: "It's a famous outstanding problem in K-theory of algebraic topology; it's not the Millennium Problem, but it's no less important in the field of algebraic topology. Around 2016, Sir Atiyah gave a negative answer to this proposition, but the paper he came up with was less than satisfactory. Not only was the actual proof process only half a page long, but by the fourth part of the paper he was even talking about the history of mathematics ......"

　　After a moment's pause, Orion shrugged and continued, "At least according to Mathoverflow, he has so far not responded to the questions that have been raised about him, and academics are sceptical about his paper."

　　The paper on complex structures on the six-dimensional spherical S^6 is available on Arxiv, and having "solved" a famous problem in K-theory, in less than two years he has solved another one of the most important problems in number theory, and in mathematics in general. ......, Orion certainly hoped that this was true; after all, everyone in the maths profession has a bit of a hero's complex.

　　But for this old man of nearly 90 years ......, to be honest he didn't have much hope. Mathematics is a young man's discipline, and once a person ages, both memory and thinking ability will decline significantly. As a result, few mathematicians could produce outstanding results in their later years that were no less impressive than those in their younger ages.

　　Anyway, no matter what the final result is, it is good that the old man is happy ......

　　......

　　The Riemann Conjecture is an interesting subject, but not Orion's primary concern at the moment. After setting a tab of concern on the Heidelberg Laureate Forum, he returned the focus of his work to the Light of Fusion mission.

　　It was too much work to design the Stellarator directly, and quantum computers were still a long way off, so after considering all the factors, he finally chose superconducting materials as his next topic.

　　To be honest, superconducting materials weren't easy either, but as far as he could tell it was the closest subject to his research area.

　　Frick Chemistry Lab, Orion met Connie. Because of the collaborative project with Professor Herrero, he had basically been on an exchange visit to MIT for the past half year, and only returned last week.

　　"How is the project on superconducting materials going?"

　　"I can't give you an accurate result, but overall, it's going quite well." Passing a USB stick into Orion's hand, Connie continued, "I've written a summary report on the relevant research progress, and it's placed in the folder beginning with C in the USB stick, which I had originally planned to send to your mailbox."

　　"I see, I'll look at it later."

　　Looking at the serious expression on Orion's face, Connie said with some excitement, "Professor, you're finally planning to make a move?"

　　Orion said briefly, "Well ...... because of various reasons, I will recently shift the focus of my work from mathematics to the subject of superconducting materials."

　　As for what it was because of, of course he wouldn't say.

　　After spending half an hour quickly reading through the report, Orion had a rough idea of the progress of the subject.

　　In short, the Pablo-Jarillo-Herrero Laboratory was mainly doing theory, studying the symmetry, pseudogap, nematic phases, etc. of this superconducting phase. And the Gordon Institute for Computational Materials and the Sarote lab do applications, mainly through a lot of experiments to find a way that this superconductivity can be maintained under conditions that increase the carrier concentration of graphene.

　　It had to be said that Professor Herrero was indeed a great expert in the field of graphene, and after receiving the ten million dollar funding from StarTech, the research has progressed in a remarkable way. And with the help of these theoretical results, the research of Gordon Institute for Computational Materials and Sarote Laboratory in the field of application has also made many beautiful milestones.

　　But there was still a considerable distance from the final results.

　　After pondering over the image on the computer screen for a few moments, Orion quickly had a clear understanding of the work he needed to do. What he was good at was calculating materials, using mathematical methods to find patterns in material science. 

　　For him, then, the first thing he needed to do was to build a reliable mathematical model based on the data collected in the three labs over the course of almost a year or so. Secondly, in order to make the project faster, he needed more manpower. Professor Chirik, for example, is a good candidate ......