The top student must be diligent.

Chapter 151 Cybermaterials

A week has passed since Xiao Yi's paper was published on arxiv, and the discussion on the calculation of absolute electronic properties has become increasingly heated in the entire materials community and condensed matter physics community - strictly speaking, it is not just condensed matter physics, because in addition to this direction, scholars from other fields in the field of physics have also joined the discussion.

For example, those scholars in particle physics.

They also discovered for the first time that path integral and Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques can be combined to predict the trajectory and motion patterns of electrons.

This forced them to think, what if they could use the same method to study the behavior of other particles?
After all, there are many other microscopic particles besides electrons.

When they use a particle collider, particles collide at sub-light speeds and can almost create an entire microscopic world.

If this method could help them simulate particle collision experiments, it would obviously greatly assist their research.

But the question is, 'I'll solve the collider,' who's going to solve the math?
To this end, the theoretical physics community called in their nuclear weapon - Edward Witten.

Edward Witten is a top expert in string theory and quantum field theory, and the originator of M-theory. M-theory is considered to be the ultimate theory of the universe and a candidate for the theory of everything, capable of unifying quantum mechanics and relativity. However, because M-theory is too difficult to verify, it has been limited to the scope of theory until now.
However, although Edward Witten is a theoretical physicist, his achievements in mathematics can make many mathematicians feel ashamed, because as a physicist, he has won the Fields Medal, the highest honor in mathematics.

There is a saying that describes him as the best physicist among mathematicians and the best mathematics among physicists.

Therefore, in order to extend Xiao Yi's method to theoretical physics, it is necessary to rely on Edward Witten.

However, faced with the petitions of his physics colleagues, Edward Witten had no choice but to express his opinion on his social media platform: [I am sorry, I have to disappoint you all. This is obviously not an easy task. There are many problems, such as how can we make a one-to-one correspondence between path integrals and other particles?
Similarly, how can we use Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods to deal with these contents?

Different particles have different situations, and we all need to classify them differently.

In fact, I often hear Pierre Deligne talk about the genius Xiao Yi. I also read his paper a few days ago. I was surprised that the mathematical methods in this paper gave me a natural feeling, as if these methods were designed to be used by Xiao Yi in this way. There is an incredible sense of fit.

But this is obviously impossible. It can only be said that when Xiao Yi used these methods, he was always able to use clever methods to perfectly integrate these seemingly unrelated things. Just like at the beginning, there seemed to be an irreconcilable contradiction between the quark confinement theory and the strong interaction force, but in the end, with the help of quantum chromodynamics, they were finally unified together with the help of color charge symmetry, forming our modern understanding of strong interaction.

I find it difficult to do this too.

Well, so I have a suggestion. Why not try to let Xiao Yi study our theoretical physics? Maybe he can solve your request? 】

Professor Witten's reply could only make scholars in the physics community feel helpless. Even the mathematical nuclear weapons in their physics community said that they could not do it. Did they really have to ask Xiao Yi for help?

Well, maybe you can try it?

After all, their theoretical physics is so interesting, maybe it can attract Xiao Yi's interest?

...As the author of the paper, Xiao Yi naturally received a lot of attention regarding the reaction of the international scientific community.

Although this incident did not directly become a hot topic, he still became very popular in the relevant fields in China.

For example, on a platform like Bihu, which is a mixed bag of people but may occasionally involve some real knowledge, the discussion on the calculation of absolute electronicity has also made it to the hot search list.

Researchers from key domestic laboratories have stated that their laboratories are ready to use absolute electronic calculations as core experimental tools, which are expected to be used on a large scale.

But there are also people who have raised criticisms, and their reasons for criticism are quite reasonable.

[Absolute electronic calculation is certainly a very good method, but have you ever considered what kind of consequences will arise once this computational materials science method becomes a habit and the results of the calculations are taken as the standard?
This can cause us to miss out on a lot of things that we haven’t discovered in the past!
There is no computational materials science method that can fully describe the microscopic world of materials. Moreover, even if it can be fully described, it is beyond the reach of our current computer performance.

If there are some new mechanisms that we have not discovered, the large-scale use of computational methods will make it difficult for us to discover these unknown mechanisms in the future, just like magic-angle graphene superconductivity. Do you think that using these computational materials science methods can help us predict it before we discover it?

Experiment is the king of materials science. Calculation should not occupy such a high position, and we must never lower the status of experiment.

Otherwise, the entire materials community will be the one to regret it in the end.

Cyber ​​materials science is not advisable! 】

This kind of critical comments has caused a lot of people to think and got quite a few people involved in the discussion.

The results of computational materials science are indeed just as the last sentence says, it can be called a kind of cyber materials science, the conclusions are all virtual, and only when they are completed in reality, they are real.

In general, whether at home or abroad, the evaluation of absolute electronic calculation is mostly good, with few bad ones. The rest express the need to use it dialectically so that it can truly become a tool rather than a guiding principle.

However, Xiao Yi did not express much opinion on these matters.

He alone cannot change how the scientific community uses his method. People may even say, "You are just a mathematician. What do you know about absolute electronic calculations?"

All I can say is, believe in the wisdom of the scientific community.

As for him at this time, he finally had the chance to attend the celebration banquet hosted by Luo Mingya's research group.

(End of this chapter)