Monday in Aspen Center for Physics

ACP (http://www.aspenphys.org/) is basically a summer camp for physicists (most profs) from all fields of physics.

This morning I attended a talk by David Weiss (PSU) on designing neutral atom quantum computer and by Cheng Chin (Chicago) on his progress in Li-Cs mixed species quantum computer.

Cheng Chin has used interesting nanofabricated diffraction plate to create very stable triangular optical lattices
[look for paper by Klinger et al to come?]

Lunch: Robin Cote (UConn) mentioned calculation on LiRb systems: molecular potentials (by QChem codes) and photoassociation rates ... calc. fit with measured feshbach res. b/t (6Li, 87Rb) and (7Li, 87Rb).
[will followup with him]

Talked to Peter Reynolds, program manager from ARO, who shared an interest with holographic physics and topological insulator (3D), as connected to the string talk next.

Afternoon: I attended a colloquium by Clifford Johnson (USC) on string theory (AdS/CFT) with possible applications to condensed matter physics. Met two interesting guys, Josh Davis (http://arxiv.org/abs/0809.1876) and Esko Keski-Vakkuri (http://arxiv.org/abs/0905.4538, http://arxiv.org/abs/0805.4643) --- they have used AdS/CFT (effective to treat finite temperature systems) to calculate quantum Hall physics, esp. AC conductivity at finite T (http://arxiv.org/abs/0905.4538)！
[Questions for them -- how does this work for massless Dirac fermions in graphene? and other difficult finite-T problem., eg. 2D superfluid/superconductor. Can AdS/CFT treat disorder? ]

The speaker Clifford Johnson has mentioned interesting aspect about the "ideal fluid" aspect measured both in RHIC (hydrodynamics of strongly interacting quark gluon plasma) and in John Thomas group at Duke (cold Li fermions) where viscosity/entropy is low at 1/(4pi)...

Also in the afternoon Nikolai Prokofiev (UMass) proved a general theorem on disorder-driven phase transitions must go through inter-mixed phases (droplets) and claim there should be no such Superfluid-Mott transition
[Hmm need to learn more].

Stopped briefly on a chalk talk by Djordje Minic (Virginia Tech) on the physics of Rieman hypothesis in number theory and how it may be related to string theory?? (http://arxiv.org/abs/0903.4321 --- aha, I know the author back in old days!)

I am sharing an office with Cheng Chin and Klaus Ziegler (CM theorist from Ausburg who works on both graphene and cold atoms). Had an interesting discussion with Klaus on special plasmon modes and optical properties of graphene. He has several PRLs that I want to discuss with in coming days.

On way home met Biao Wu from CAS, former student of Qian Niu from Austin. He suggested several interesting experiments for 2D BEC: 1) quantum corral and quantum chaos with BEC reflecting from optical "billiard wall" (a sheet of blue detuned light) -- http://arxiv.org/abs/0812.4602, motivated by Hari Manoharan's famous STM quantum corral, but quantum chaos has not been experimentally observed; 2) use patterned (maybe lithography fabricated) Fibonacci or quasiperiodic potential to look at how BEC propagates in such potentials.