光纤：通往光信息时代的彩虹

英国华裔科学家高锟因其在“有关光在纤维中的传输以用于光学通信方面”取得的突破性成就,获得2009年诺贝尔物理学奖一半的奖金;美国科学家威拉德·博伊尔和乔治·史密斯因发明半导体成像器件——电荷耦合器件（CCD）图像传感器,分享2009年物理学奖的另一半奖金。本刊特请上海交通大学陈益新教授、中国科学院光电技术研究所朱耆祥副研究员分别撰写了光纤及CCD图像传感器方面的文章,以飨读者。     

对我的老师钱临照先生的怀念

钱先生已经离我们去了,但是他的诲人不倦的精神永远铭刻在我的心中．他虽然没有教过我书,但是我从他那里学来的知识,远比我在国外的导师多,他总是那么认真地教,又那么谦虚,当他的学生是很幸运的．３０年代,钱先生在英国伦敦大学Ａｎｄｒａｄｅ教授处深造,他做的研究工作是金属的范性形变．我于１９４６年到英国伯明翰大学冶金系,也是学的金属的范性形变．我们用了Ａｎｄｒａｄｅ教授设计的小巧玲珑的恒应力拉伸机,拉伸单晶锌丝．一天,Ａｎｄａｒｄｅ教授来到我们实验室参观,正看见我在装拉伸样品,他微笑地对我说：“你知道吗？…     

我能站到鸡蛋上吗?--生鸡蛋能承受多大的压力

我们曾在电视上看到这样的气功表演：“气功大师”站到两个鸡蛋上，鸡蛋竟然没有被压破．前几年气功流行时，可以花钱学到这种“功夫”．物理知识使我对”气功大师”的“功夫”有些怀疑．在老百姓当中早就流传一种说法：一只手摄不破生鸡蛋．从力学的原理分析，鸡蛋是椭圆形的，鸡蛋的形状决定了它可以承受较大的压力．那些“气功大师”的“功夫”可能不是练出来的，是鸡蛋本身就可以承受那么大的压力．     

我的俄汉词典

１９６３年９月１日，家父用根小竹扁担，一头担着家中唯一的杉木箱，一头担着铺盖卷，送我到县城望江中学报到．当时，“望中”是全县独一无二的完全中学，每届初中招生百来人，农村小学能考上它的，只有“尖子”．家父一路得意，喜形于色，我至今还记得他那高兴的样子． 初一开俄语课，老师说最好买本词典．可是，县里没有卖的．周末回家一说，家父当晚就向生产队长请了假．次日一早，他步行２０多里到江边码头，花６角钱买了张没有座位的轮船票去安庆市，花９角钱在市里住了一夜，买回一本定价１元２角的《俄汉词典》．我在班上可能要算…     

2009年诺贝尔物理学奖获得者：英国华裔科学家高锟。美国科学家威拉德·博伊尔、乔治·史密斯

瑞典皇家科学院2009年10月6日宣布,将2009年诺贝尔物理学奖授予英国华裔科学家高锟以及美国科学家威拉德·博伊尔和乔治·史密斯．     

我的成长经历

说来真的不好意思,我小的时候,在上初三以前,真是一个不爱学习的淘气小孩,整天玩,不好好上课,不认真完成作业,经常考试不及格。当时家里对我没有任何约束和要求,他们认为我身体不好,又是女孩,能长大成人就够了。于是“玩”就成为我生活的几乎全部。事情发生变化是在1948年,我的二哥张宗燧从美国回来,周围的人对他赞赏有加,这对我产生了“震动”,在他的影响下,我逐渐把兴趣从“玩”转向了学习。     

纤径通衢——“光纤之父”高锟

 光导纤维传光是利用在光导纤维中传输光线在界面上发生全反射来实现的以光导纤维为传导介质的传感技术已在医学、物理学、化学、通信、纺织、航空航天、电气、汽车、自动化等几乎所有工程领域和基础实验科学领域得到广泛应用。光纤电缆是20世纪最重要的发明之一。光纤电缆以玻璃作介质代替铜,使一根头发般细小的光纤,其传输的信息量相当于一条饭桌般粗大的铜“线”。它彻底改变了人类通讯的模式,为目前的信息高速公路奠定了基础,使“用一条电话线传送一套电影”的幻想成为现实。发明光纤电缆的,就是被誉为“光纤之父”的华人科学家高锟。     

物理学：A Source of Power for Man

  《现代物理知识》杂志的编辑们计划在2010年刊载关于“学物理能做什么”的系列文章,指定我也写一篇凑热闹。这让我想起在2006年中央电视台《对话》栏目的某期节目中,主持人也问过我类似的问题,不过问题的表述是：“学物理的人,如果日后不做专门的物理研究,能干什么？”我记得当时我的回答是：“这个问题应该换个问法：‘一个人,如果他学会了物理,还有什么他不能干的？’” 在试图回答“学物理能做什么”之前,我想回答一下“物理学是什么”也许是有益的。     

我的二哥张宗燧

 张宗燧是我的二哥,他比我大差不多20岁。在我出生的那一年,他考取了英庚款去英国剑桥大学读博士了。我所知道的有关他小的时候的故事都是从父母的口中得到的。他在英国得到学位以后,留在欧洲继续他的研究工作,一直到第二次世界大战开始时,他才不得不回国。     

科学家研制出最长光纤激光

俄罗斯科学院西伯利亚分院自动化和测电学研究所与英国伯明翰阿斯顿大学合作，研制出全球最长的光纤激光，有300km． 学者们确认，要想让光纤在传输波长1．5μm的光波时损耗最少，300km已是极限．该研究所副所长、光缆实验室主任谢尔盖·巴宾解释说，激光就像是两个平面之间的加强型环境，“一旦长度超过300km，定波就无法形成，因为波形分散，无法抵达终点”．     

Quantum Mechanics is Incomplete but it is Consistent with Locality

Quantum mechanics is seen to be incomplete not because it cannot explain the correlations that characterize entanglement without invoking either non-locality or realism, both of which, despite special relativity or no-go theorems, are at least conceivable. Quantum mechanics is incomplete, in a perhaps broader than hidden variable sense, because it fails to address within its theoretical structure the question of how even a single particle, by being in a given quantum state, causes the frequency distribution of measurement values specified by the state. This incompleteness of quantum mechanics as it is currently conceived is both fundamental and indefeasible. Failure to address the question of how the states of entangled particles are given effect to yield the correlations they specify is simply a particular albeit attention arresting instance of this incompleteness. But if that is so then quantum mechanics cannot be held to be inconsistent with locality.     

Anomalous is ubiquitous

Brownian motion is widely considered the quintessential model of diffusion processes—the most elemental random transport processes in Science and Engineering. Yet so, examples of diffusion processes displaying highly non-Brownian statistics–commonly termed “Anomalous Diffusion” processes–are omnipresent both in the natural sciences and in engineered systems. The scientific interest in Anomalous Diffusion and its applications is growing exponentially in the recent years. In this Paper we review the key statistics of Anomalous Diffusion processes: sub-diffusion and super-diffusion, long-range dependence and the Joseph effect, Lévy statistics and the Noah effect, and 1/f noise. We further present a theoretical model–generalizing the Einstein–Smoluchowski diffusion model–which provides a unified explanation for the prevalence of Anomalous Diffusion statistics. Our model shows that what is commonly perceived as “anomalous” is in effect ubiquitous.     

Space-time is four-dimensional

The quantum state of the universe is described by Hartle and Hawking's ground state which is defined by a path integral over all compact metrics. The most probable classical evolution of the universe can be considered to come from some gravitational instanton by a quantum tunneling. These arguments have been generalized to the case of Kaluza-Klein models. It is found that in d= 11 simple supergravity, with a minisuperspace ansatz, all instantons must have a four dimensional sector. It suggests that this is the main reason why space-time is four-dimensional.This essay received the third award from the Gravity Research Foundation for the year 1985—Ed.     

Everything is entangled

We show that big bang cosmology implies a high degree of entanglement of particles in the universe. In fact, a typical particle is entangled with many particles far outside our horizon. However, the entanglement is spread nearly uniformly so that two randomly chosen particles are unlikely to be directly entangled with each other – the reduced density matrix describing any pair is likely to be separable.     

Nonlocality is transitive

We show a transitivity property of nonlocal correlations: There exist tripartite nonsignaling correlations of which the bipartite marginals between A and B as well as B and C are nonlocal and any tripartite nonsignaling system between A, B, and C consistent with them must be such that the bipartite marginal between A and C is also nonlocal. This property represents a step towards ruling out certain alternative models for the explanation of quantum correlations such as hidden communication at finite speed. Whereas it is not possible to rule out this model experimentally, it is the goal of our approach to demonstrate this explanation to be logically inconsistent: either the communication cannot remain hidden, or its speed has to be infinite. The existence of a three-party system that is pairwise nonlocal is of independent interest in the light of the monogamy property of nonlocality.     

Auditory perception of material is fragile while action is strikingly robust

While many psychoacoustic studies have found that listeners can recover some causal properties of sound-generating objects (such as the material), comparatively little is known about the causal properties of the sound-generating actions and how they are perceived. This article reports on a study comparing the performance of listeners required to identify either the actions or the materials used to generate sound stimuli. Stimuli were recordings of a set of cylinders of two sizes and four materials (wood, plastic, glass, metal) undergoing four different actions (scraping, rolling, hitting, bouncing). Experiment 1 tested how well each sound conveyed that it was generated with a different action or material. Experiment 2 measured both accuracy and reaction times for the identification of actions and materials. Listeners were faster and more accurate at identifying the action than the material. Even for the subset of sounds for which actions and materials were equivalently well identified, listeners were faster at identifying the action than the material. These results suggest that the auditory system is well-suited to extract information about sound-generating actions.     

Where is SUSY?

The searches for supersymmetry at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have so far yielded only null results and have considerably tightened the bounds on the sparticle masses. This has generated some skepticism in the literature regarding the ‘naturalness of SUSY’ which qualitatively requires some sparticles to be relatively light. Re-examining some of the bounds from LHC searches, it is argued with specific examples that the above skepticism is a red herring because (i) a quantitative and universally accepted definition of ‘naturalness’ is not available and (ii) even if some conventional definitions of naturalness is accepted at their face values, the alleged tension with the apparently stringent LHC bounds wither away once the strong assumptions, by no means compelling, underlying such bounds are relaxed.