Scholar’s Advanced Technological System

Chapter 488: High-Temperature Superconductivity’s Physical Mechanism And Strongly Correlated System

Even though Lu Zhou was very interested in Professor Herrero’s research project, he was responsible for the controllable nuclear fusion project. He didn’t have time to research the deep underlying physics behind the SG-1 material.

However, his intuition told him that if the strongly correlated system in SG-1 could be solved, it might reveal the physical mechanism of high-temperature superconductivity or even the calculations for a superconducting state.

Most people couldn’t understand it, but it was very clear in Lu Zhou’s mind.

This theoretical project might be even more significant than controllable nuclear fusion.

Because once the high-temperature superconductivity problem was solved, it would greatly reduce the engineering difficulty of hadron colliders or even magnetic confinement fusion devices.

Lu Zhou put this research into the database of the Institute for Advanced Study. He planned on continuing this research when he had more time.

As for now, his highest priority was still controllable nuclear fusion…

Professor Keriber spent less than three days in China, and on the third day, he got on a plane and quickly went back to Germany.

On the other hand, almost immediately after Professor Keriber’s departure, Academician Pan arrived at Jinling from Beijing. He then went to Lu Zhou’s mansion in Zhongshan International.

As Academician Pan looked around the living room, he opened his mouth in surprise.

“This house is really big; how much was it?”

Lu Zhou: “Mid eight figures.”

Academician Pan said with envy, “It seems that the lithium batteries really made you a lot of money.”

Lu Zhou smiled and said, “The Chinese New Year holiday isn’t even over, and you came here from Beijing. You’re not here just to give me Chinese New Year blessings, right?” He brought two cups of hot tea and placed them on the table. After that, he sat across from Academician Pan, who was sitting on the sofa.

Academician Pan smiled and asked jokingly, “What, am I not welcomed?”

“What do you mean?” Lu Zhou smiled and said, “I’m just a bit surprised.”

“Enough screwing around, let’s get to business,” Academician Pan said. He then stopped smiling and stood up. He looked at Lu Zhou and asked in a serious tone, “Have you contacted the people at the Max Planck Institute?”

Lu Zhou: “You could say so.”

Academician Pan frowned at this ambiguous statement and asked, “What do you mean?”

Lu Zhou: “I was in contact with an engineer from the Wendelstein 7-X laboratory. As for the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, I still haven’t contacted them yet.”

Lu Zhou sipped some tea to moisten his throat before he continued to speak.

“Our conversation went relatively well. I showed them our carbon-based superconducting material technology and said that we would complete the superconducting magnet design by the end of the year. They were very interested in our technology, so I decided to make a technology exchange proposal.”

Academician Pan asked, “The German guy agreed?”

This was his biggest concern.

Back when Yuhua University bought the H1-Heliac from the Australian National University (ANU), other than paying AU$35 million and the 4 million yuan shipping fee, in the contract, Yuhua University also agreed to install a magnetized plasma interaction device on ANU’s MAGPIE-II, which was a power generation component.

The Australians didn’t have the perfect technology, but the Germans didn’t have this problem.

After all, WEGA was a machine that created several world records. Even though it was sitting there collecting dust, it wasn’t that easy to buy it.

Lu Zhou smiled as he said in a relaxed tone, “Not for the time being, but I think the chances are very high.”

After that, Lu Zhou gave a brief overview of the situation to Academician Pan.

As Academician Pan sat across from him, he had a look of approval on his face.

Lu Zhou’s personal research abilities were unquestionable; no one would doubt the abilities of a Nobel Prize laureate.

However, he was only 25 years old. Even if his abilities were strong, he lacked experience.

In the beginning, Pan Changhong still had some concerns about whether or not Lu Zhou could take on the leader role for such a large scale scientific research project, and whether or not he could coordinate the various research institutes involved.

But now it seemed that his concerns were redundant…

Lu Zhou drank some tea again before he continued, “The most important thing now is to hire a group of experts and prepare for the purchase of the new equipment. Do you have any recommendations?”

The stellarator wasn’t a refrigerator; one couldn’t just buy one, plug it in, and expect it to start working.

How to use the equipment safely, how to disassemble and assemble it; all these had to be done by professionals who were trained to do these operations. While delivering the machine, the Max Planck Institute would also be responsible for the training of personnel. However, Lu Zhou had to send some people that had a general idea of what was going on.

He couldn’t send someone that had to learn from scratch, right?

Academician Pan thought for a moment before he said, “This isn’t an issue if you can actually get the machine. We can just find some people from other research institutes. The Southwestern Institute of Physics has experts in this area. There’s also the Institutes of Physical Science at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. However, I’m afraid the field of the stellarator is way too small. There’s a lot of people who are involved in this area of research but not many are doing in-depth research.”

Lu Zhou understood the country’s shortcomings, so he didn’t have any strong requirements. He merely said, “Just do your best. If you can’t, experts on the tokamak are fine. Even though the two fusion devices have different technical designs, they’re both involved in magnetic confinement, so it should be relatively similar.”

Academician Pan: “I’ll try to find you some candidates in this area… Speaking of which, how long will it be before the STAR Stellarator Research Institute finishes construction?”

When Lu Zhou heard this question, he smiled.

He had encountered many problems regarding the research on controllable nuclear fusion. However, the construction of the stellarator research institute had been going smoothly. Whenever he thought about this, he felt happy.

“According to Regiment Commander Dai, it should be done in May.”

…

Academician Pan didn’t stay in Jinling for long. After visiting the construction site for the stellarator research institute and Institute for Advanced Study, he returned to Beijing and began to help Lu Zhou find expert candidates.

On the other hand, the Chinese New Year holiday was basically over, and Lu Zhou’s research was back on track.

While he continued to improve the SG-1 material, he was also planning the formation of an Institute of Mathematics and Institute of Physics.

After all, the theory was the basis of all applied work. The Institute of Mathematics and the Institute of Physics were two vital components for his Jinling Institute for Advanced Study plan.

However, he encountered some awkward trouble at the beginning.

Compared to the Institute of Computational Materials, the establishment of the Institute of Mathematics and the Institute of Physics didn’t go as smooth as imagined.

Even though he received many high-quality resumes, the candidates were generally younger; most of them were recent PhD graduates that had only recently left campus.

There weren’t that many top quality resumes.

Theoretical disciplines were inherently different than applied disciplines. Research in materials science required a lot of scientific labor to conduct repetitive tasks. But for theoretical disciplines like mathematics and physics, it was difficult to produce research results by human labor alone.

In order to solve this problem, Lu Zhou finally thought of Principal Xu. Two days after the end of the Chinese New Year holiday, Lu Zhou went to visit his office to talk to him…

When Principal Xu heard Lu Zhou’s problem, he took a sip of tea. He then smiled.

“… Highly talented people are often unwilling to change their research environment. Generally, any researchers that can secure a formal researcher position, unless they were bullied and didn’t receive funding or something, didn’t like to move their a*ses and change locations. Your type of wide-spread approach might be attractive to researchers with less than ten years of experience, but it’s not that attractive for outstanding formal researchers.”

Principal Xu paused for a second before he said, “Your hiring compensation is pretty good, and there’s no need to increase it. However, you can’t expect to attract talent just from compensation alone. For outstanding scholars, fame is often more important than money.”

Even though Principal Xu was an academician, he had worked in this administrative role for many years, so he had a lot of personal experience in administrative and hiring work.

Lu Zhou listened carefully to the principal’s words. He nodded thoughtfully.

He then asked, “Do you have any good methods?”

“Be proactive,” Principal Xu smiled and said. “I’m sure even academicians will seriously consider invitations from a Nobel Prize laureate.”