Theory palaver

Theory palaver is a discussion forum for the people in Aalto university interested in theoretical condensed matter physics. The idea is each time to present some relevant and interesting calculation, preferably on black/whiteboard, with enough details such that people not only understand the result of the calculation, but also how it actually is made. Ideally, the calculation is general enough for the audience to be able to appreciate it but also colourful demonstrations of any useful tricks-of-trade are encouraged. It can be a part of the speaker's own work, an account of a calculation presented in some journal article or a detailed derivation of a standard method often used in the field.

A typical theory palaver talk would thus be:

  • 15 minutes of introduction/motivation containing only a minimal set of equations, if any
  • 30-45 minutes where the actual calculation is done

The theory palavers take place on every second Friday at 14:15 in the hall F3 of the Physics building or the Low Temperature Laboratory's meeting room 173d in the Nano house.

Tentative schedule for 2007-08 can be found below. If you want to attend the palaver, inform Juha Voutilainen, and a date for a talk will be scheduled for you. If a particular date is not suitable for you, try to replace it with someone else in the list, and notify us on the change. Welcome!

2011—2012

When Where Who Title
8.11. F3 Francesco Massel '


2007—2008

When Where Who Title
19.10. F3 Matti Laakso Negative quantum capacitance in a single-electron transistor
2.11. F3 Christian Flindt Full counting statistics of non-Markovian processes
16.11. F3 Pauli Virtanen Josephson junctions in magnetic field
14.12. Nano Karri Saloriutta Massless Dirac fermions and the Klein paradox in graphene
... Christmas break
25.1. Nano Juha Voutilainen Hamiltonian approach to electric transport through a two-level quantum dot
8.2. Nano Tomi Ruokola Time-periodic Hamiltonians and Floquet theory
22.2. Nano Tero Heikkilä Fluctuation theorems Cancelled

2006—2007

When Where Who Title
29.9. F2 Tero Heikkilä Fokker-Planck equation and its application for Josephson effect
13.10. F2 Juha Suorsa Chern-Simons action and its application to the fractional quantum Hall effect
20.10. F2 Pauli Virtanen Onsager relations, and NS structures out of equilibrium
3.11. F2 Janne Salo Tunneling states in metastable potential minima
17.11. F2 Juha Voutilainen Simple model for relaxation in a multi-level system
1.12. F2 Ari Harju Properties of low-dimensional semiconductor nanostructures
15.12. F2 Sami Virtanen Renormalization of the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov equations with zero range interaction
... 22.12. - 5.1. Christmas break
12.1. F2 Markku Stenberg Noise correlations in normal-superconducting nanostructures
26.1. F2 Teemu Ojanen General formula for the current through an interacting region
9.2. F2 Nikolai Kopnin Current noise in long quantum SINIS junctions
23.2. F2 Ville Pietilä Conserving versus gapless approximations for weakly interacting Bose gases
23.3. 14:00 F2 Matti Laakso Inelastic cotunneling rate in a single-electron transistor
20.4. F2 Ville Bergholm Defining fidelities for quantum operations, or an abstruse way of arriving at an intuitive result
11.5. F2 Yvette Hancock The DMRG (or Do Matrices Really Good) Method
18.5. F2 Mikko Möttönen Measurement of the Berry phase through observables
15.6. F2 Jani Särkkä Derivation of the DMPK equation