Chapter 526

Outside the window, the snow was still falling. Compared to northern cities like Kyoto or Boston near the ocean, the snow in Rongcheng seemed delicate, drifting like willow catkins, disappearing quickly upon hitting the ground.

"Bang~"

It was already 12:40 AM, and one could still hear the sound of fireworks from outside the window.

Xu Qingzhou held his breath, his attention entirely focused on the manuscript in front of him.

The previous deduction of the partner particle was something he had come up with, speculating that the partner particle's mass was between 200 GeV and 500 GeV, located in the more complex Higgs sector.

Now, refining the model again wasn't difficult; he was even quite adept at it.

Fortunately, before throwing the data over, Richard had already used the supercomputer at CERN to process the high-energy collision data, screening out events that might contain Higgs partner particle signals, which saved him a lot of trouble.

In the nearly one year of experiments, LHC mathematicians had made corresponding adjustments to the model, but in Xu Qingzhou's view... it was hard to describe.

Basically, there were no major changes. There were some good parts, but most steps were completely superficial. For example, here, using Bayesian statistics to extract weak signals from collision data—this method was very inefficient; it would be better to use persistent homology to analyze the topological structure of collision events to distinguish partner particle decay characteristics from background noise.

Xu Qingzhou didn't question the strength of these scholars because of this; after all, not everyone was a "hacker" like him, bringing physics from his previous life back with him. Moreover, this thing was created by him, so he knew it like the back of his hand and could naturally see the problems at a glance.

As he was writing, the phone screen on the table suddenly lit up.

It was a message from Song Yao.

Song Yao: "Professor Xu, we're home."

"Hoo~"

Xu Qingzhou rubbed his sore temples, organized the manuscript, and planned to have a long phone call with the school beauty Song before going to sleep.

The New Year passed quite quickly.

The Xu family went to the Song family on the second day of the Lunar New Year, visited the elderly in the countryside on the third, and after returning to Rongcheng, besides accompanying his parents, he also needed to look at the superconducting thin film data sent by Carson.

Thus, Xu Qingzhou used his spare time to consider the calculations for the partner particle.

He first considered quantum field theory and renormalization, correcting the top quark loop diagram.

It went quite smoothly because the original model was made by him, so he knew best where adjustments were needed.

But some places also needed to wait until he returned to Boston for detailed calculations.

Including non-perturbative effects, such as the vacuum stability of the Higgs potential, which required numerical solving of path integrals on a discrete spacetime grid via lattice field theory. The four-dimensional network calculations inside, with hundreds of thousands of Monte Carlo samplings, required the parallel processing power of a supercomputer.

The sixth day of the Lunar New Year, Song family.

In front of the full-length mirror, Song Yao swatted away the paw Ding Jiahui had placed on her butt. "What are you blindly touching?"

"Yaoyao, you've changed."

Ding Jiahui looked at Song Yao pitifully and said aggrievedly, "Xu Qingzhou can touch, but I can't?"

"He can't either."

Song Yao pouted, adjusting her collar in the mirror, thinking to herself that when that guy ambushed her, he would always get a beating.

Ding Jiahui sighed, one hand propped on the cabinet, chin resting on her hand, sizing up her sister who was impossibly beautiful.

Her hair was a bit fluffy, tied with a small rubber band.

As a veteran anime lover, only one sentence was in her heart: "Ma'am, your hairstyle is very dangerous."

"Yaoyao, your 'wifey' vibe is even stronger than last time."

"I'm already married anyway," Song Yao said indifferently.

Ding Jiahui couldn't refute. Looking at Song Yao from the side, with her curvaceous figure, she couldn't help but feel a bit envious. Yaoyao's chest looked "bigger" than before; then she looked at her own...

Maybe she wouldn't even be able to feed her children in the future.

She sighed, "Xu Qingzhou really hit the jackpot, actually finding you as a wife."

"Have you and Guo Ziyang considered getting married?"

"We're still early. We only met both sets of parents this year; they were all quite satisfied, but our idea is to wait another year or two until work is stable before considering marriage."

Song Yao nodded, simply combed her hair, put on thick clothes, and prepared to go out with Ding Jiahui.

Ding Jiahui leaned in, "Let me touch again... haha, alright, alright, I won't mess around. Let's go; we arranged for 2:00 PM, so it's just right to go now."

Wutong Residential Complex.

"Hmm, I've already finished looking at the data... Perhaps you can adjust the topological carrier concentration through ALD in-situ doping to optimize the coupling strength."

Xu Qingzhou said while putting on his clothes.

Carson and Ma Ersi were pushing forward the progress of the superconducting thin film, but they found that the interaction between the topological surface states and the superconductor's Cooper pairs was relatively weak, and the electron wave function of the topological surface states could not resonate with the wave function of the superconducting Cooper pairs, causing the Majorana zero-energy modes to be unable to "walk" stably.

To put it vividly, imagine they were currently making a precision mechanical watch, with the movement driven by two interlocking gears: the topological surface states and the superconducting Cooper pairs.

The problem now is...

The two gears don't match; the sharp teeth of Gear A are sliding over the soft metal surface layer of Gear B, unable to interlock and transmit power.

On the phone, Carson replied, "I've noted it down; I'll look for the appropriate carrier concentration tomorrow."

"Good, if there's any situation, you can call me."

Xu Qingzhou hung up the phone.

These past few days, Carson repeated the experiment according to the previous parameters. Under the condition of Jc at (12T, 4.2K), the performance of the superconducting thin film could still reach 2.0×10^6 A/cm².

This was good news.

Of course, there were no shortage of problems. Although they could make commercial-grade superconducting thin films, the success rate was extremely low; out of 10 superconducting thin films, only 2 met the Jc value standard.

Besides the Jc value, the Tc fluctuation was ±0.65K, while the commercial-grade target was ±0.3K.

Furthermore, the surface roughness (RMS) had a current fluctuation range of 1.2–2.0nm, far higher than the commercial-grade standard of less than 1.0nm.

In Xu Qingzhou's view, these weren't too big of a problem. The core Jc had already met the standard; solving and optimizing others like critical temperature (Tc), grain size, etc., was just a matter of time, slowly iterating.

Moreover, 2.0×10^6 A/cm² wasn't his goal.

You have to know that whether it's Princeton, Cambridge, or their MIT laboratory, the standard in recent years has been greater than 3.0×10^6 A/cm². Only when reaching this data can it truly be considered to have entered the ranks of world-class levels.

After finishing his call with Carson, he greeted Ms. Wang, who was watching TV in the living room, and went out.

Wang Xiaping shook her head helplessly. She used to think the things her son said sounded like chanting spells; now that he used English, it sounded even more like it.

Boston, MIT laboratory.

"Hi, Ma Ersi, let's get moving." Carson clapped his hands, full of energy.

Suddenly, there was a joy like a serf turning over and singing.

He could imagine that once the results were announced, the "least reliable project" voted on at the MIT Investment Club's year-end mock investment meeting would surely leave countless people dumbfounded.

Facts proved that he had bet right again this time.

God was on their side.

If nothing unexpected happened, the Superconducting Thin Film Club would definitely have a seat for their research group.

(End of chapter)