Finally, the COVID19 fades away and many activities resume starting from this April. I flight to Sweden to attend a 2-week summer school called Quantum Connections in Sweden-11 from 11 to 24 June. It is really a wonderful and cozy 2-week holiday.
Three Nobel Laureates? I'm in!
One of the postdoc in our group, Wei-Lin Tu, told me this summer school in February. I checked the lecturers and recognized many familar names: Artur Ekert, David Gross, Gerard ‘t Hooft, Frank Wilczek, and Krishna Rajagopal. The next moment, I suddenly realized that three of these names I know are Nobel Laureates! There is no way to say no to this opportunity! I have watched lecture videos of some of them, and I’d like to attend their real-time lectures.
Cozy life during the 2-week holidy
The organizers are fantastic! A bus is arranged to the airport to pick us up to the Venue of the summer school, Hogberga Gard, at an area called Lidingo near Stockholm. After about 40-minute bus trip, we arrived at a courtyard-like place: there is a main building in the middle, two sides are wing rooms for sleeping, and a place for lectures. The whole area is near the sea, so the view is beautiful (see the picture below).
My personal experience about this summer school
Apart from the above-mentioned amazing aspects, which I believe most people would find attractive, there are several unique personal experience for myself.
First, I noticed that the organizer, Frank Wilczek, loves to play with small toys that encapsulate physics. I shared the same hobby and he is the first physicist I meet who also love these toys. For example, at the very beginning of the summer school, he gave all attenders a toy call Rattleback, which I knew from a video by Prof. Walter Lewin about 6 year. Its motion is utterly counterintuitive and I still do not have any satisfying answer. What’s more, I say toys like gyroscope in his office, along with other physics toys I don’t recognize.
The second is that I finally meet other physicists who also think about interpretation of quantum mechanics. It seems like an extremely fundamental problem, but not very many physicists are working on it. The problem bugs me constantly. No long after I switched to physics in September 2019, the world encountered COVID19 and I haven’t met many physicists outside the University of Tokyo. I didn’t meet anyone (mostly my fellow students) who is interested in talking this problem. Luckily, during this summer school, two lecturers talk about this topic: Martin Greiter and Gerard ‘t Hooft. What’s more, during dinner, a Professor from China also talked a lot about his personal understanding of the interpretation of quantum mechanics. It is such a relief to know there are other physicists being concerned about this topic.
