AB,
        Summer 2010
       Aurel Bulgac

         Office:        Physics and Astronomy Building, B478
         Phone:        (206)685-2988, FAX: (206)685-9829
          Email:         bulgac@uw.edu, aurel.bulgac.phys@gmail.com
          Skype:           aurelb27
          FaceTime:     aurel.bulgac@gmail.com
          Zoom (per appointment): 681 252 2532

 


                                                    Professor

                                                    Fellow of the American Physical Society, APS Outstanding Referee
                                                                                  

                                                                                             Nuclear Theory Group
                                                                                             Department of Physics

                                                                                             University of Washington
                                                                                             P.O. Box 351560
                                                                                             Seattle, WA 98195-1560, USA                             



      
       TEACHING

       PUBLICATIONS

       TALKS

       MEDIA

       COLLABORATORS

ORCID iD iconhttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-0556-4107

    



RESEARCH 

Real-Time Dynamics of Quantized Vortices in a Unitary Fermi Gas  online supplementary material for
A. Bulgac, Y.-L. Luo, P. Magierski, K.J. Roche, and Y. Yu,  Real-Time Dynamics of Quantized Vortices in a Unitary Fermi Superfluid,  Science, 332, 1288 (2011).

Vortex Ring  - online material for A. Bulgac, M.M. Forbes, M.M. Kelley, K.J. Roche, and G. Wlazłowski,  Quantized Superfluid Vortex Rings in the Unitary Fermi GasPhys. Rev. Lett. 112, 025301 (2014).

Vortex Rings 2  - online supplementary material for G. Wlazłowski, A. Bulgac, M.M. Forbes, and K.J. Roche,  Life Cycle of Superfluid Vortices in the Unitary Fermi Gas,  Phys. Rev. A 91, 031602(R) (2015).

Nuclear Energy Density Functional - online material for A. Bulgac, M.M. Forbes, and S. Jin,  arXiv:1506.09195

Induced Fission of 240Pu within a Real-Time Microscopic Framework - online material for A. Bulgac, P. Magierski, K.J. Roche, and I. Stetcu,   Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 122504 (2016), arXiv:1511.00738, Editor's Choice and Featured in Physics

Vortex pinning and dynamics in the neutron star crust - online material for G. Wlazłowski, K. Sekizawa, P. Magierski, A. Bulgac, and M.M. Forbes, , arXiv:1606.04847

Numerical Programs

Here I shall add from time to time various relatively small numerical programs I have written and which others might find useful. Please do not count on any help of any kind on my part, apart from the comments in the write-up, you will have to figure out everything if you want to use it, how to use it and all the rest. However, if you use it, please let me know about that and include the corresponding acknowledgment  in the relevant documents.

 


      
                                              On teaching mathematics, V.I. Arnold
                                Alternate link
                                              These are the words of a very wise mathematician, worth reading especially by every aspiring theoretical physicist. 
                                            

                                              How to become a GOOD Theoretical Physicist by Gerard 't Hooft
                                              
                                               Vladimir Gribov (BH)
                                          (That was my graduate school. I was the speaker at one of those seminars,
                                           which started in the late morning, no lunch break, and ended in late afternoon.
                                           Only after my work was dissected to the bone, and BH was one of the main debaters,
                                           I was allowed to officially defend my thesis.)

                                               Scientific Method: Defend the integrity of physics by G. Ellis and J. Silk




What is Science?



Gravitational Waves Detected    -   Physics Review Letters, 116, 061102 (2016)


In the end Pauli said, in an uncharacteristic way: ``Perhaps  my idea is crazy.'' Whereupon Bohr stood up, walked a few steps towards Pauli, looked down, pointed a finger at Pauli and said, ``The problem is not whether your idea is crazy, but whether it is crazy enough." (related by T.D. Lee, 1985)

"Science makes progress funeral by funeral."
"
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
In different formulations this is attributed to Paul A. Samuelson, Max Planck, Thomas S. Kuhn, Henri Poincaré, and others.

From: All the world's a lab...then the assistant professor, Sydney Brenner, Vol. 4, Issue 6 (1994)

"Your main task will be to establish your research, and for this you will soon have to write your first grant application. This is a special art which you will need to master, and here are a few tips. Firstly, you will never again in your life write about any subject in as much detail. Leave nothing out, especially in describing how you are going to do your experiments. Secondly, you will need to convince the committee that everything is going to work — so don't raise any questions, even if they are the kind of questions that we should be trying to answer in research. Thirdly, don 't be too original, as your ideas may somehow penetrate the unconscious of your reviewer and emerge later as his novel research. Finally, make sure you have quoted absolutely everybody because there is nothing that annoys reviewers more than to find no mention of their epoch–making work.
...
I have had many postdoctoral fellows who swore that they would continue to stay at the bench themselves and never build up large groups. Alas, within a few years, their groups had grown and they were fully engaged in writing grant applications, renewals, extensions and reports to sustain the research they now could not find the time to do and for which they needed a large group of students and postdocs to fulfill the promises made in the grants. I have no real answer to this perplexing problem. Perhaps one should aim at being only moderately successful, but I feel that is too metastable a state, poised as it is between the disappointments of failure and the regrets of total success."

and there is more at Sydney Brenner's Loose Ends









I attribute essentially all my success to the very large amount of chocolate that I consume… Personally I feel that milk chocolate makes you stupid… Now dark chocolate is the way to go. It’s one thing if you want like a medicine or chemistry Nobel Prize, OK, but if you want a physics Nobel Prize it pretty much has got to be dark chocolate.
Eric Cornell, University of Colorado, The Chicago Tribune, October 10, 2012.

In Physics, Telling Cranks from Experts Ain't Easy, John Horgan, Scientific American, December 11th, 2011


Science controversies past and present


Theach both theories

If you think that being smarter is a good thing for you, or environment, beware.
Science has spoken!  At last! Read, and learn. But at your own risk:

The Cost of Smarts, NYT editorial May 7, 2008
Lots of Animals Learn, but Smarter Isn't Better, by Carl Zimmer, NYT, May 6, 2008

Maybe there is truth after all in the old saying:  Ignorance is bliss!

DON'T WORRY! (or learn) BE HAPPY!


Scientific American - 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense - and Other Featured Articles  
Hubble Space Telescope - HST pictures - Spaceflight Now - Earth from Space
 
An Ancient Universe: How Astronomers Know the Vast Scale of Cosmic Time
 
www.PhysicsCentral.com - Movie physics
  - Newton's laws of motion
BEC and other easy to understand physics stuff

Optical illusions and related stuff and other stuff with physics for kids, physics of cars and types of forces
Chatting with Little Green Men License to Wonder
Vatican on Intelligent Design
John Allen Paulos
an a bunch of things you could have thought of yourself, if you would have tried. But for some (irrational) reasons, most of us refuse to do so.
Newton's Laws of Motion for Automobiles and More!

And following is my web equivalent of bumper stickers! Or T-shirts with words of wisdom on them.



Unless we change direction, we are likely to wind up where we are headed. Apparently an ancient Chinese proverb.

A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP
Leonard Nimoy


On
e repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil. Friedrich Nietzsche Thus Spoke Zarathustra

I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.  Friedrich Nietsche

In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. Friedrich Nietsche

From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality. Ernest Hemingway

He was the real nuisance when I was taking high school physics. It was the classic thing ... you ask for help and all you really want to know is the answer to problem 5B - and he wants to explain it to you. Persis Drell, SLAC, on being the daughter of a physicist, San Jose News, December 18, 2007.

Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them.   
Peter Ustinov

If science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change. 
Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.   Bertrand Russell
The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution. Bertrand Russell

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
  Bertrand Russell

Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.  Niels Bohr


NOVA interview with Richard Feynman, titled "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out."

My interest in science is to simply find out about the world. . . . When we go to investigate it,  we shouldn't pre-decide what it is we're trying to do, except to try to find out more about it. . . .  Altogether, I can't believe these special stories that have been made up about our relationship  to the universe at large because they seem to me too simple, too connected, too local, too  provincial. . . . I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it's much more  interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. 

I wouldn't want my doctor thinking that intelligent design was an equally plausible hypothesis to evolution any  more than I would want my airplane pilot believing in the flat Earth. James Langer  

On a paper submitted by a physicist colleague: This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. Wolfgang Pauli

When you can measure what you are speaking about and express it in numbers,  you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind.  Lord Kelvin


Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened. Winston Churchill

The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning while other subjects merely require scholarship. Robert Heinlein

I'm a strong believer that ignorance is important in science. If you know too much, you start seeing why things won't work. That's why it's important to change your field to collect more ignorance. Sydney Brenner

Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that amateurs built the Ark and professionals built the Titanic. Dave Barry

Jones's First Law: Anyone who makes a significant contribution to any field of endeavor, and stays in that field long enough, becomes an obstruction to its progress - in direct proportion to the importance of their original contribution.

Generation Terrorists - The Quotations Page - Aphorisms Galore, there are so many there, but don't miss these however. - Yogi Berra

Peter's Principle: In an organization, each person rises to the level of his own incompetence.

A reasonable man adapts himself to suit his environment. An unreasonable man persists in attempting to adapt his environment to suit himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. George Bernard Shaw

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, and die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. Robert A. Heinlein, The Notebook of Lazarus Long

One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny, and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways.    Bertrand Russell
We should never rewrite the Constitution to enshrine intolerance. Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

When my time comes, I hope I can die in harness, as Francis Crick did. When he was told that his colon cancer had returned, at first he said nothing; he simply looked into the distance for a minute and then resumed his previous train of thought. When pressed about his diagnosis a few weeks later, he said, “Whatever has a beginning must have an ending.” When he died, at 88, he was still fully engaged in his most creative work.  Oliver Sacks, NYT, July 6th, 2013