On November 25, 2015, Prof. Ding Hong, executive deputy director and chief scientist of Beijing National Lab for Condensed Matter Physics, came to the 45th SUSTC Lecture Hall at invitation and delivered a report entitled “Eureka: Weyl Fermions in the Solid Universe”. Vice president Tang Tao presided over the report.​

 Prof. Ding Hong

Prof. Ding Hong, a researcher of the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has been engaged in the experimental research of condensed matter physics, and has achieved a number of important results widely recognized by international peers. In 1999, he won the US Sloan Award; in 2008, he was recognized as one of the first batch of scientists to be included in the national “Thousand People Program”; in 2011, he became a fellow of the American Physical Society.

The 45th SUSTC Lecture Hall

“My mission has shifted from scientific research to science popularization.”

Prof. Ding Hong said: “My mission has shifted from scientific research to science popularization so that more people will understand science. Scientific research has three stages. The first stage is to find a job to support the family; the second stage is to do a better job of scientific research; the third stage is do scientific research for the sake of curiosity. Scientific research also arouses the public curiosity. Therefore, at this level, scientific research is of the same significance for us as science popularization. We no longer try hard to raise our academic status but prefer to arouse the public curiosity and inspire their scientific spirit.”

In the report, Prof. Ding Hong, from the historical point of view, first introduced the evaluation of the Weyl fermions by Weyl and Chen Ning Yang, and then he went on to explore the differences between quasiparticles and elementary particles. He introduced SUSTC teachers and students to the basic concepts of fermions, bosons, chirality, superconductivity and so on. Finally, he described how to find the Weyl fermions in TaAs single crystals and their special property through three experiments.

About its potential applications, Prof. Ding Hong said: “We know that in a solid material, electrons have three properties. They have spins, so there is spintronics; they have orbits, so there are orbitronics. Now chances are they have chirality. Will it possibly lead to chiral electronics? This is our idea at present.”​

In the Q&A session, Prof. Ding Hong carefully answered the questions from the audience. After the report, he continued in-depth discussions with teachers and students of our university.

Vice president Tang Tao presiding over the report

Reported by: SUSTC Student Press