In the afternoon of September 17, 2015, Professor Wen Xiaogang, the world famous condensed-matter physicist was invited to the SUSTC as the lecturer guest of the 31st SUSTC Lecture, he brought an excellent report titled “unity of information and material: the second quantum revolution” to teachers and students of SUSTC at the lecture hall in the First Science Building. Professor Zhao Yusheng, the director of Scientific Research Department of our school hosted the lecture.

Wen Xiaogang is a distinguished theoretical physicist in the field of contemporary condensed matter physics, and now serves as the tenured professor at MIT, the Green Chair Professor, the American Physical Society Fellow, and the Chair Professor of Canadian Waterloo Frontier Theoretical Physics Institute, etc. 

Professor Wen introduced his new revolutionary idea that information, matter and energy are unified at first. He provided an intuitive feeling to the students through the frequency of electron on the track, and he told us that the energy directly proportional to the frequency seems to be unified itself. After that Professor Wen also proposed that the vacuum is not having nothing at all actually, but it should be a kind of ocean of “qubit”, which is just the basic unit of quantum information.

In addition, Professor Wen showed the development process of the whole physics to the students from the beginning of several revolutions which had occurred. From Newtonian mechanics to quantum mechanics, from Kepler’s laws of motion to Einstein’s general theory of relativity, Professor Wen sufficiently presented the epic development of the whole physics to us, and then the vision of “the second quantum revolution” proposed excited the students’ great interests.

When it came to learning, Professor Wen pointed that interest is the most important driving force, and he suggested that students should follow their own interests, and do not worry that what has been learned is useless, “I have never met useless knowledge” he said. He also mentioned that, in his school experiences, he had changed directions for many times, but what he had learnt played an important role in his later research work.

In the Q & A link, the students were eager to ask questions regarding the evolution of topological properties from spatial two-dimension to three-dimension, quantum computation, falsifiability of experiments, etc. Professor Wen enthusiastically encouraged students to participate in physical study and research when answering questions, and he mentioned the current demands for diversified talents in physics field.

The report ended in warm applause, a seed of “qubit” has rooted and germinated in the minds of students, which inspires us to find a reasonable answer for this world to make our own contribution to human development.

(Submitted by: Student Lu Qiangsehng)