A pause

Due to circumstance there is a break in these words, in this process. However it will continue in June, and rather than wrapping up in August, as previously planned, the residency will instead continue until October. The next post will be on, or before, June 7th, so please come back sometime after that and see if this pause has proved to be thought provoking.

Increasing the clarity of the unclear clearly

The light half.

Day 44. (already) A brief meeting with the boss. What a difference ten minutes makes. He has been reading the blog and is evidently appalled by the woeful lack of understanding and factual content therein; he specifically mentions the unclear “Clearly, this implies that...” which I referred to some weeks ago. It’s time for me to learn something. Only a few minutes later I leave the office with real comprehension about that formerly incomprehensible page turn (not least that the vertical lines either side of the letter r, the r representing the reflection coefficient, are the math shorthand for ‘the magnitude of’, so I can now at least write out the sentence in English rather than mathematics: Clearly this implies that the magnitude of the reflection coefficient is equal to one. (Why didn’t he just say that in the first place?)). But I’m also a little sad to have lost the infinitely intriguing imagined interpretation of imaginary numbers, having had them tied down to the mundane conceptual realities of axes on a graph (although as I write the understanding of why one would want to map the imaginary on the perpendicular axis to the real is again disappearing in a fog of misunderstanding, so that’s ok). Anyway, for the moment I don’t think it’s necessarily important to know the mathematician’s rationale for the perpendicularisation of real and imaginary, of import is that electronic engineers use the fact that real and imaginary numbers are plotted on the x- and y- axes (respectively) as an analogue for impedance in circuits. In capacitors the voltage and current are 90 degrees out of phase, and so these components (as well as the roles of resistors and inductors, the three collectively comprising impedance) can be mapped out on the axes (resistance is represented by the positive x-axis (the real equivalent), inductance by the positive y-axis (the imaginary equivalent), and capacitance the negative y-axis (imaginary equivalent). Bother, that seems to describe the roles of three of the four axes, but begs the question of what it is represented by the negative x-axis?). Anyway, it is evidently clear that by this means the overall impedance of a circuit can readily be calculated. You see?

 
As I write I am sitting on the train heading back home – again my reserved “window” seat was next to a piece of non-transparent train structure that largely obscures any view of the outside world, and someone else was already sitting in it anyway (having evidently also switched the seat tickets around to make it look like his!); but he is welcome to his falsely acquired sliver of view. It’s almost dark anyway, and I am now sitting at a forward facing window seat at a table, where I have spread out all over the place, and with relative acres of darkening glass next to me. I am riding high on the knowledge that I’ve acquired knowledge, and desperately trying to think of what to ask for the tutorial we have timetabled for next week; it seems that this art tomfoolery can remain obdurately obfuscated no longer.

Miniscule devisive shoes

About time.

I left the house at dawn this morning, at that very moment of its occurrence. The blackbirds were just starting their chorale and the sky was lightening. As I travelled to the station the mist rested in the valleys, and hung in the trees on the hillsides; approaching the turning, a long view through to a low east horizon showed a disc of deep luminous red hanging within the grey fog, the sun making its local debut for the day, stunning. Even as I saw it the news on the car radio reported of the evacuation of the Fukushima Daiichi power station because of a “spike of radioactivity” following explosions and a fire. On hearing the news I am stupefied in sadness and horror – what we do to ourselves, what we do to this earth.

As I write I am en route back up to the lab, a two day stint of residing. The train creaks and trembles as it rattles along the warming tracks, the day outside increasingly sunny, the warmth and light burning off the vestiges of water vapour, giving the day a bright golden clarity. I have decided that the time, being half way gone, is apposite for revisiting the copy of nature photonics that Graham handed me that first trip to the University (the Silicon Photonics special, August 2010, volume 4, number 8). 

[Low tide at St Germans as we pass, the muddy slivers of estuary snaking between the breast-like hummocky hills.] 

I can still remember my first naive fumblings between its sheets, sitting in the doctor’s surgery waiting room, trying to make some sense of it and recording my wonder at the words. I wonder how the experience of the time spent so far amidst the silicon photonicists will have affected my abilities in that realm.

Even as I open the covers I can’t help the smile as I read the words “Towards fabless silicon photonics” – doesn’t it sound like they’re trying to take the fun out of it? and I’m afraid that “Mid infra-red photonics in silicon and germanium” just makes me think of the silicon geranium photos I have taken. But enough mucking around, time to redive into Reed, Mashanovich, Gardes and Thompson, and their small world of silicon optical modulators (pages 518 to 526).

[Unbelievably low tide on the Plym as we pass, the sunshiny mudflat thronging with birds; it is the equinox this weekend, so I guess we’re due big springs soon, but the moon last night was a bright and clear more-than-semicircle, so I should think it’s pretty much fully neaps. Perhaps we are passing at the moment of its lowest ebb.]

In the review abstract they report that “Modulators have been improved dramatically in recent years, with a notable increase in bandwidth from the megahertz to the multigigahertz regime in just over half a decade.”, which I think sounds pretty amazing when you think that such a shift must be supported by actual physical technological and fabrication developments (this latter the word responsible for the dour, truncated fab in fabless), as well as the conceptual and ideological drivers involved.

[I just went and squeezed in next to a guy facing the right way in order to take my customary photograph of the “Teignmouth Electron” as we passed (a long series of muzzy and largely imperceptible images of a (currently rather rapidly and man-assistedly) decaying boat on the banks of the Teign). This “Teigmouth Electron” is a boat that is reminiscent to me of the real Teigmouth Electron, which is apparently slowly dissolving on a Caribbean beach, and to which I was introduced by a piece of Art made by Tacita Dean. In the book about it she tells the story of Donald Crowhurst who went out alone onto the watery surface of this world, on his final earthly journey, in the little vessel, on a partially-faked round the world race. It is a haunting tale that is beautifully told by her, delving into the realms of hope and expectation and time. An inspiring work. Just before he got off at Exeter the man came to thank me - he’d looked it up on the internet via his phone and thought it was a great picture (I recommended he look up the book and read the words...).  Very satisfying to have passed on the awareness of something wonderful, especially so geographically close to the location of the doppelganger craft.]

Back in the journal I grasp what the abstract is trying to tell me, although there are still some words that are yet mysterious. I am not clear as to what the modulation depth refers (I assume it is more than simply a physical depth in the wafer), and do not know how the energy requirement per bit can be altered, although with such increases in numbers of bits presumably it is something of a major consideration. As for the size of the device footprint, I do not know it but assume, given the scales at which they are working, that it must be very tiny, and very fast; miniscule devisive running shoes?

Art in the lab

I had thought that suffering three years of what they refer to as teaching on a fine art BA had finished, once and for all, any desire for me to continue a relationship with formal education. However, last week I became the proud recipient of a certificate that enables me to be in the presence of multifarious lasers, and with only a little more tuition I may yet even be allowed to switch one on. The laser course, at a mere one and a half hours, was not the most painstaking of learning processes, and yet my name is printed on the certificated page (in a different font to that surrounding it) and the qualification valid for three years. Not only that but it was sunny pretty much all day. If I do ever work out how lasers work (and perhaps should mention that the jocular Spaniard assured me formerly that they shouldn’t) I will let you know. I had hoped that this blog post might be learned and profound (dream on?!), possibly even adding some insight as to how lasers do work, for example, since it marks the half way point of my residency in the silicon photonics lab. But instead I’m rather in the mood for a bit of Art.

For the lab meeting on Thursday I festooned the walls of the meeting room with photos and drawings that are some of the products of my work during the time I have been at Surrey (take a look in a couple of days at www.emmahambly.net for images, which will be placed there imminently!). They are a plethora of things, and some to me are beautiful. [A note to scientists at this point, the term beautiful was basically illegal at art college when I was there (one and two third years ago), since it was judged very low brow to make things that have aesthetic appeal which can be deemed as such. However, there may have been a subsequent cultural shift, as much more recently (one and a third years ago) a Turner Prize winner’s wall drawings were positively described as beautiful by the initiated critics.] Having explained to the lab group what the works were all about, it was time for a pop up exhibition in the ATI, and so I opened the doors to the science masses. There followed numerous interesting conversations, about photography and dyes and light emitters, electronics in paper, etc, which have left me with many fascinating avenues, which, I imagine, will not get explored to any great depth as a result of constraints of time. [Although I have managed to bend time on several occasions, I am still not entirely able to manipulate it fully to my advantage, and it seems that I’m bound by the laws of mundane physicality most of the time, and so sadly currently consider my ability to explore the world as being finite.] A hit with the aesthetic judge (a member of staff from the Arts office at the University) were the rather abstract Polaroid photograms; some having been illuminated by the naturally spectral light of a full moon, and some using electronically derived illumination (i.e. my phone screen light). And I think the boss liked the glass piece I made that is inspired by the integration of electronics and optics, and loosely illustrates a ring resonator. This week I am to take the same objects and images to an art audience (some students at Plymouth College of Art), and am intrigued to see  whether they garner a different response there. For now I am off to work on the big drawing I am making, and to see if I can master the stretching of time.

Here I planted some flower seeds yesterday, and even this morning, beneath the rays of the spring sun passing through the greenhouse glass, I can sense the burgeoning awakenings in the warm dampness of their earthy beds.

Habitat under threat

A quiet couple of visits to the lab in recent weeks. The first spent droring, as Mr White might say; luxurious hours of concentration in the laboratory following leads and optic cables around the bench and through slivers of silicon, pencil lines describing the experimental set up; incident light, reflected light, invisible light from boxed sources.

Then this week, a day spent in the library: reading, thinking, listening to the quiet hum of productivity, and on another floor, among vending machines and current journals, the raucous chatter of excited communications. As I bathe in the gentle murmurings of this cosseting haven I am internally, viscerally, bemoaning the possible loss of this environment as a result of the increasing electronification of the world. It isn’t only ancient habitats that are lost with the incessant spread of humanity; we also wipe out our own, more recent, heritage as we go.

Having been fed on a diet of ejournals in a previous incarnation I decide to try to ‘take out’ my first ebook, but cannot get the system to work – I’m not sorry to be delaying that experience until another occasion. Instead I return to the clean room for some time spent in intimately deep visual communication with the sputter machine. Because of the particulate debris they produce I am not allowed to bring my pencil and paper in here, so must use the smooth blue sheets provided on the inside of the airlock doors, and a biro. Not normally my favourite drawing implement, but it seems to work ok, and I (dressed in a pale blue clean suit (deliberately matching my sheaf of paper?), overshoes, cap and purple rubber gloves) immerse into another world until I am asked to move my chair for the man to vacuum beneath it, using the amazing technicolor Dyson.

A percentage of reality

Today a full day of physical work; gratifyingly tired. I am reduced to sitting on the floor to write as I don’t have the heart to shift either of the cats who are inhabiting the newly arrived chairs. His and hers, crashed out next to the stove. (I think that M + T, the kind chair donors, will feel that this is the appropriate hierarchy of users.) 

 
It’s dark and tonight’s scene is illuminated only by the light from the laptop screen and numerous flames, both naked and encased behind the mica windows of the aforementioned sizzling stove.
 
The book lies open at a page showing the title of section 2.3.

 
Phase of a propagating wave and its wavevector.

 
I can’t tell if it’s merely the rhythm of the words, or a combination of that with their subtle rhyme and alliteration, but I cannot help but roll the phrase around in my mouth for a while, feeling its sound. It feels good. And visually the veve (vera verity?) embedded in the last word is somehow both alien, and yet unspeakably perfect. 

 
Yesterday I spent much of the day with the book, revisiting things that I had glancingly encountered previously. I was making notes, reading around, and more fully understanding ideas that were being described to me. I realised I’d previously totally overcomplicated the notion of phase. What is phase? (– it helps, when dealing with this question, not to worry about wave particle duality implications, but just to consider light in terms of its wave properties - in my experience this shifts the understanding from mind-bendingly impossibly complicated to really pretty straightforward). It also helps to consider that the time element involved is fundamental – phase is the proportion of a periodic waveform that passes some reference point after a time t. Simple. So, on I skipped, frankly even feeling a little bit smug at how readily it was all going in this time. But.

 
Amazing that the simple act of turning a page can move one from lackadaisical absorption and regurgitation of information, into utter incomprehension. That thin layer from page 13 to page 14 has a sharp edge, and is followed by some maths. I stumbled around with a number of the equations, which I didn’t follow but felt that I should, and which culminated with the rather uncompromising words:
“Clearly this implies that:
r = 1
and that r is also complex and hence a phase shift is imposed on the reflected wave.”

 
I’m afraid the only thing clear to me at that moment was that clarity and I had parted company. (Maybe this ‘clearly’, as with other transparencies, is a relative term, and I simply had some kind of nonlinear response to the information such that my optical density increased with the intensity of the mathematics). But I do not wish to infer that the writings of Reed and Knights (or “the boss” as the former is currently known among intimate company) are in any way at fault – only moments earlier I had been applauding the inclusiveness of their fundamental introductions to various aspects of the subject. No, rather it was that the brain of the resident artist was not at its best, and seemed to fall at what is shamefacedly probably quite an easy hurdle.

 
An urgent injection of low brow was required so I returned to wiki, in an effort to ease the pressure on my head. 

 
The wiki silicon photonics page is not exactly what I would describe as low brow, and when I reach the statement that two-photon absorption “ ...is related to the Kerr effect, and by analogy with complex refractive index, can be thought of as the imaginary-part of a complex Kerr nonlinearity.[8] At the 1.55 micrometre telecommunication wavelength, this imaginary part is approximately 10% of the real part.[42]”, I decide that my efforts into comprehension of this realm are probably done for the day. I take a morsel of comfort from thinking that at least I get a little of what a wavelength of 1.55 microns implies, but my brain falters at trying to compute how one can calculate the size of an imaginary nonlinearity, let alone as a percentage of reality.

Intrinsic mediocrity

I must admit that a few months ago I wouldn’t have envisaged the pleasure I would garner from time spent with “Semiconductor Devices, Physics and Technology” by S.M. Sze (whose name has such a delicious plethora of connotations attached). Admittedly this evening the pleasure is somewhat enhanced by warm murmurings from the newly-fixed stove (just in time for the cold weather this week, and after the dully unatmospheric electronic heating of Christmas), and a glass of a really rather nice Merlot. However, delving into the world of physical chemistry has a new glow these days, which it has acquired through the light of a desire to understand it, rather than it being an educational formality. But more of insights resulting from (Mr, Ms, Dr, Prof...?) Sze’s words at a later date.

I spent this morning sitting out on the deck, in the unstinting sunshine, finishing reading The Periodic Kingdom, and frankly now have a more fundamental understanding of the nature of chemistry than ever before, thanks to the combined work of Peter Atkins, who wrote the book, and Martin Blissett at the ATI who suggested / loaned it to me. (The more detailed reference for those who are interested is Atkins, P; The Periodic Kingdom, a journey into the land of the chemical elements; 1995; Weidenfeld &Nicolson, London). I have been doing some investigations into group IV chemicals over the last weeks (although P Atkins has now informed me that to comply with the IUPAC I should no longer refer to them as that, rather calling them group 14 chemicals, as proposed by the chemists’ committee), since this group contains, among other interesting things, silicon. Silicon, which is the subject of a significant chunk of my current intellectual and artistic endeavours, is a semiconductor (more about them anon), and as such is fundamental in the world of contemporary technology. But today the striking interest, to a biologist at least, is that carbon is also a group IV (or 14) element, and as a result of its properties as a member of that group has qualities that are indispensable for its role in living organisms. I’m going to quote Mr Atkins directly here, as I am taken with his description:

“... the overarching power of carbon to participate in molecule formation, a power that results in such complexity of structure and collaboration that the alliances it forms become alive and can reflect upon themselves [I think he’s talking about us here]. The essential reason for this latent power... is carbon’s intrinsic mediocrity, it’s lack of self assertion. ... it is neither an aggressive shedder of electrons, as are elements to [its] left, nor is it an avid receiver, like the atoms to its right. Carbon is mild in its demands on the alliances it makes. Moreover it is even content with its own company, and can make extensive liaisons with itself, forming chains, rings and trees of atoms. ... By being in the middle, undemanding and not particularly generous, it can spin lasting alliances rather than hasty conspiracies.”

I am under the impression that statistics, at a gross level, will always reduce the impact of extraordinary outliers by attempting to constrain them with the middling throng. As a result average will always be average, no matter how amazing it really is (although maybe I’m skewing this argument to a normal distribution). This notion saddens me, as I (along with the devil) see the wonder in the detail. And yet today I have been taking real pleasure from the thought that a fundamental prerequisite of life as we know it is the passivity of this rather unexciting element; that intrinsic mediocrity is one of the primary components responsible for the bickering goldfinches on the bird feeder, the snowdrops and violets that are pushing up in the garden, bursting with spring, the fire that warms me as I write.