Typhoon, La Boutique de Joel Robuchon at Marunouchi, and Graphene

There was a meeting at Marunouchi, the centre of Tokyo, to discuss how to organize some physics conference. The meeting was held in the Saturday afternoon when a typhoon was approaching to Tokyo. Not a soul was to be seen in the street, which is usually busy with lots of business people.

Before the meeing, I had a lunch in La Botique de Joel Robuchon, a French-style cafe run by a French chef. A piece of quiche with anchovy and pain au curry were what I bought with a cup of coffee. They tasted good.

Unlike the street, quite a number of customers were inside the cafe, enjoying the calm rainy day in the heart of Tokyo. The storm was expected to approach most closely in the evening, so that there were still some time to enjoy the atmosphere until all the trains in Tokyo would be suspended due to strong wind and heavy rain.

Before entering this cafe, I considered to take out and eat in the meeting room. But I changed my mind for the warm and quite place. Outside was very dark even though it was just after the noon. Rain was pouring. It was like a day in Europe. To tell the truth, I realised that I don't dislike rainy days very much if there is a nice cafe to have a seat and stay peacefully.

In the meeting, there was a discussion on graphene, which were the subject to have won the Nobel prize for physics this year. I wondered why graphene won the prize instead of nanotube, when the announcement of the winners was made. Today's discussion was among theoreticians, but I found a good reason why graphene is more worthwhile than nanotube.

As mentioned before, graphene is a two-dimensional physical system. There are actually many two-dimensional systems which were recently awarded the physics Nobel prize.  The quantum Hall effect in semiconductors under a strong magnetic field, and Bose-Einstein condensate of ultra-cold dilute atomic gases are such examples. I learned in the meeting that graphene is a strongly correlated many-electrons system in 2D space, where the perturbative approach is useless. In this sense, graphene should be classified as one of the hottest physical subjects in the modern physics.  I guess that some breakthrough was made recently by the prize winners in its theory and experimental study, which  allow graphene to be applicable in the engineering.

I started to be interested in this new 2D system from that point of view: strongly correlated many-body systems.

Universities in Tokyo

The Japanese population is on decline. So is the population of (young) students. To win the fierce survival race (like in the movie "Battle Royale"), universities in Tokyo are working hard to recruit a decreasing number of high school students nowadays.

Students decide which university to go, of course, mainly based on their hope and dream about their future, but the university location is also important for their decision.

This factor cannot be easily dismissed by saying that such a motivation is not right. Besides acquiring knowledges and skills at university, students need to enjoy their campus life. If you live in a university village isolated by high mountains and it takes hours to reach the downtown Tokyo, the only thing you do is to study. It is easy to guess that such a student can be quite vulnerable at mental stresses and frustrations. If your dream is to become a scholar, this situation might be the best condition. However, not everyone wants to follow that path, for sure.

University administrators know this fact (because they used to be like these modern students 40 years ago?), so that they try hard to refurbish their main campus located in the central part of Tokyo. In 1990s, when Tokyo was in the bubble economy, everyone was so rich that they want to enter universities at any rate. They believed that the graduation from University is a ticket to be rich and happy. So, universities need a gigantic campus, which was impossible to possess in the downtown Tokyo area. Inevitably, the admins started to purchase big lands in the peripheral part of Tokyo, and built new lecture halls there. As a result, by 2001, many universities in Tokyo have at least two campuses: a small one in the downtown and a huge one in the outskirts of Tokyo.

When the bubble bursted and the Japanese society sank deeply in the recession, many people lost their bright dreams and hopes. A serious problem is that many had to give up marriage, or having a baby even if they manage to marry, due to financial reasons. The birth rate dropped and soon the population started to fall.

The huge campuses are no need now. Students can choose where to study now, and they choose the small main campus in the heart of Tokyo. Those universities who shifted the main function to the outskirts campus became suddenly unpopular, so they started to move back again to the center. This is what is happening right now.

Nobel prize 2010

This year's Nobel prizes were announced. Manchester guys received the prize in Physics for their achievement in "graphene", which I did not recognize at the first place. I know that fulleren (such as C-60, or so-called Bucky ball) won the prize for Chemistry, and that carbon nanotube was about to win the Physics prize. What is Graphene?

According to newspapers, nanotube is a quasi-1D object, while "Graphene" is two-dimensional. So, the Nobel organization seems to skip the one-dimensional one...but why?

I am interested in the reason why carbon nanotube was undervalued this time. This is because the department I used to belong (in the UK) put a high priority on the research on carbon nanobubes. I guess my fellows would be angry if they realize that what they invested for last 10 years is just worthless.

In addition, one of the inventers (or founders?) of the nanotube is a japanese engineer working for NEC. His comment of disappointment was placed on a Japanese newspaper, saying that "with this fact that graphene was appreciated this year, the evaluation of nanotubes has become significantly smaller now. So, my chance to receive the Nobel prize is now quite small." If this is true, I would really like to know why the one-dimensional object was skipped.