All good things had to come to an end. After all, Fefferman was the head of the mathematics department, he still had a lot of work to do in Princeton.
Lu Zhou sent Fefferman to the airport. As he watched Fefferman carry his suitcase toward the security checkpoint, Lu Zhou said, “Have a safe flight.”
“I will.” Fefferman waved goodbye and said, “If you have any new discoveries, make sure to contact me.”
Lu Zhou smiled and nodded.
“I will.”
Over the next few days, Lu Zhou returned to his Zhongshan International mansion, the buildings at the Institute for Advanced Study, and his office at Jin Ling University. His number theory classes and computational materials science classes had finished for this semester, so he didn’t have a lot of university work to do.
Lu Zhou either worked on his own research or help his students finish their academic tasks.
Honestly, when he saw his students growing and thriving, he felt a sense of accomplishment.
Mathematics department office.
Lu Zhou called Han Mengqi to his desk.
“I have some good news for you.”
Han Mengqi looked at Lu Zhou’s mysterious expression and felt suspicious.
“What good news?”
“This morning, I received an email from the ACS-Nano editorial department. Your thesis has passed review!” Lu Zhou smile and said, “Congratulations, you’re a top publishing scholar now.”
Han Mengqi was stunned. She suddenly had a joyful smile on her face.
“Really?”
“Of course.” Lu Zhou smiled and said, “This is the result of your hard work for the past six months. What do you think? Are you excited?”
Han Mengqi nodded her head excitedly.
“Yeah, super excited!”
The impact factor of ACS-Nano was around 14, and it was one of the top journals in materials science. Successfully submitting a thesis to this journal wasn’t an easy task.
Han Mengqi’s thesis reviewer was the deputy editor-in-chief, Ali Javey, a big name in the materials science world. Lu Zhou once exchanged emails with him at an academic conference.
Even though the reason why the thesis was accepted so quickly might have something to do with Lu Zhou’s name on the thesis as a corresponding author, but the quality of the thesis itself was unquestionable.
After all, reputation was part of it, but the academic community mostly cared about quality content.
When Lu Zhou saw how excited Han Mengqi was, he sincerely felt happy for her.
Roughly speaking, all of his students were quite outstanding.
In addition to Han Mengqi’s thesis, there were two PhD theses that were also published, one in number theory and one in computational materials science. They were published in SIAM Review, which had an impact factor of four, and Nano Today, which had an impact factor of 17.
Since Wu Shuimu was able to publish in a journal that had an impact factor of over 10, he was ecstatic.
Even though this thesis was part of a research project of the Institute for Advanced Study and that some people had some doubts about his first author title, he did actually put a lot of work into this project.
As for He Changwen’s thesis, other than some guidance from Lu Zhou, he basically completed it on his own.
Mathematics journals generally had lower impact factors. The real level of influence wasn’t reflected properly by the impact factors. Even though “SIAM Review” wasn’t considered to be one of the top four mathematics journals, it was still a top-tier journal according to the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Another thesis was from Feng Jin, and his journal’s impact factor was around 1-2.
His thesis was still in peer review, but the results should come out by July.
As for the other three mathematics and one materials science master’s students that weren’t able to complete their thesis, Lu Zhou didn’t blame them.
After all, different people had different abilities. Not to mention, Jin Ling University students weren’t comparable to Princeton students. He never expected all of his students to be outstanding. He only expected them to be able to complete his tasks step by step.
Lu Zhou went to the cafeteria at noon to eat some barbecue meat on rice. After he returned to his office, he saw it was about time for his interview. He changed into a handsome formal attire and sat on his office sofa. He was then interviewed by the British Nature Weekly.
Recently, he had been receiving a lot of interview invitations; some were from domestic media outlets, and others were international.
Lu Zhou knew that the public was curious about his research work. Therefore, he selectively agreed to conduct interviews for a few appropriate media outlets.
For example, Nature Weekly was one of them.
Nature Weekly was much more academic-focused than media outlets like the Daily Mail. It had a serious attitude toward covering academic figures and scientific breakthroughs.
After the reporter and the photographer arrived at the mathematics department, Lin Yuxiang enthusiastically invited the two of them to sit down. She then poured two cups of coffee for them.
The camera was turned on and the microphone was set in place. Belinda sat professionally and smiled.
She then opened her mouth and said, “Nice to meet you, Mr. Lu Zhou.”
“Nice to meet you.”
Belinda smiled and said, “Do you still remember when we met five years ago at the CERN headquarters in Switzerland? Back then, you participated in the European Nuclear research conference as an intern because of the 750 GeV characteristic peak discovery, and I interviewed you back then.”
Lu Zhou smiled and said, “No wonder you look familiar.”
Belinda smiled and said, “I still remember when Professor Grayer at CERN boasted about your physics abilities. Can I ask why did you choose the path of mathematics instead?”
“At first, it was because my major was mathematics.” Lu Zhou thought for a bit and said, “But the more in-depth research I did, the more interested I became. In the end, I decided to dive into the field.”
Belinda was surprised. “Oh really?”
Lu Zhou smiled and nodded. “Yeah.”
Belinda looked at her notes and said, “The general solution for the Yang-Mills equations has been found. According to my understanding, there is still a crucial problem that hasn’t been solved, which is the Yang-Mills existence and mass gap. A lot of physicists have said that this problem is the holy grail of modern physics… What I want to ask is, why do they say this? What is so difficult about this problem?”
This question wasn’t easy to answer.
After all, most people didn’t even know what the Yang-Mills existence and mass gap, much less understand why it was so difficult.
Lu Zhou thought for a bit.
He then said, “Figuring out the Yang-Mills existence and mass gap requires the exploration of the hadrons under the strong interaction described by the special unitary group of gauge theory. As for the unknown hadron world, the minimum frequency required for a high energy beam to detect it is the minimum mass times the square of the speed of light, divided by the Planck constant.”
Lu Zhou paused for a second before he continued, “Thus, we can calculate the minimum frequency of the hadron world experiment is 10^24 Hz. The high degree of coupling interactions indicates that the world of hadrons is very different from the world that we are familiar with. Understanding a world that one is not familiar with is a meaningful and challenging thing in and of itself. It can change the face of civilization and can help us discover livable planets.
“Simply put, we will find out how massless particles are able to form particles with mass, and how the four fundamental forces can unify together.”
Belinda looked surprised.
“So your goal is to unify the four basic forces?”
Lu Zhou smiled and said, “This isn’t just my goal, this is the entire physics world’s goal.”
Belinda immediately asked, “Then how do you think we can achieve this goal?”
Lu Zhou thought for a bit and said, “Before unifying gravity with the other three fundamental forces, I think it is important to achieve unity between the three fundamental forces first.”
“The Yang-Mills equations problem is the first step to the Grand Unified Theory. Establishing the relationship between the strong interaction and electromagnetic force will become an extremely important piece of the puzzle, and it could be the last piece we need to unify the three basic forces… After all, Weinberg’s theory of weak electricity unification has already unified the electromagnetic force and weak interaction by adding a Higgs field.”
Belinda had a thoughtful expression on her face as she continued, “So what you’re saying is, the electromagnetic force will bond the weak interaction and strong interaction together?”
“Yes.” Lu Zhou leaned back against the sofa and jokingly said, “Then they will all go find the anti-social gravitational force… But I’m guessing that won’t happen in my lifetime.”
