PIRSA:13090051

Slippery Waves: Brilliance Brings Blind Spots

Kadanoff, L. (2013). Slippery Waves: Brilliance Brings Blind Spots. Perimeter Institute. https://pirsa.org/13090051

Kadanoff, Leo. Slippery Waves: Brilliance Brings Blind Spots. Perimeter Institute, Sep. 25, 2013, https://pirsa.org/13090051 

          @misc{ pirsa_PIRSA:13090051,
            doi = {10.48660/13090051},
            url = {https://pirsa.org/13090051},
            author = {Kadanoff, Leo},
            keywords = {Mathematical physics},
            language = {en},
            title = {Slippery Waves: Brilliance Brings Blind Spots},
            publisher = {Perimeter Institute},
            year = {2013},
            month = {sep},
            note = {PIRSA:13090051 see, \url{https://pirsa.org}}
          }

Leo Kadanoff

Talk number PIRSA:13090051
DOI 10.48660/13090051
Collection
Talk Type Scientific Series
Subject

Abstract

Superfluidity and superconductivity are two remarkable phenomena in which, at low temperatures, materials abruptly gain the ability to flow without friction. Microscopic quantum theories of these phases of matter were constructed in blockbuster papers of Lev Landau (1940) and John Bardeen, Leon Cooper, and J. Robert Schrieffer (1957). The actual explanation of the flow, however, is rooted in a Einstein paper of 1924 that introduces a condensate, a quantum configuration describing a finite fraction of the particles in the system. Superfluidity can then be understood in terms of the wave function for this configuration, which necessarily extends over a finite fraction of the system. Neither blockbuster paper mentions Einstein or the crucial idea of a condensate wave function. The reasons for this omission are mooted.