Chapter 616: Inspiration is Contagious

Jinling Institute for Advanced Study.

A laboratory inside the Institute of Physics was filled with smoke.

Sheng Xianfu smoked one cigarette after another as he looked at the design sketch on the table, which he had altered many times, and sighed. “Why do you think Professor Lu is suddenly studying the Yang-Mills equations?”

Li Changxia, who was reading theses next to him, shook his head and said, “I don’t know.”

Sheng Xianfu said, “Are we still doing fusion batteries or what?”

He gave up his director position at the Southwestern Institute of Physics to come here and research the miniaturization of controllable fusion with Professor Lu. However, it had been more than two months and the research project hadn’t progressed at all.

Not only did they stagnate, but Lu Zhou was involved in other projects now.

“I don’t know.”

Sheng Xianfu couldn’t help but say, “Can you say anything other than you don’t know?”

Professor Li Changxia scratched his head and made a helpless expression as he said, “Theoretically speaking, if we can establish a unified relationship between the strong interaction and the electromagnetic force… it will benefit our understanding of the nuclear fusion conditions.”

He sounded uncertain.

After all, he was an engineering professor. If anything, he was even more confused than Sheng Xianfu.

Sheng Xianfu looked at him.

“Then what? How long do you think it will take for this theory to be put into a piece of real technology. Also, who cares if it deepens our understanding of the fusion reactor, is it going to make the fusion reactor better?”

Li Changxia sighed and said, “But we have no other option.”

Sheng Xianfu didn’t say anything this time.

He was correct.

They couldn’t do anything else.

They had designed at least a dozen solutions for solving the problem of the reactor heat dissipation. However, there wasn’t a single solution that could pass the technical feasibility test. Even in the case of the best solution, the reactor melted after 34 seconds of operation.

“Perhaps the idea of using a high-temperature fusion ignition itself is wrong.” Sheng Xianfu pondered for a while. Suddenly, he said, “Maybe like you said, if we can find a way to reduce the temperature conditions of the fusion reaction, our work might become a lot simpler.”

Professor Li Changxia tapped his cigarette and smiled. He shook his head and said, “I think that the idea of putting controllable fusion technology into a spacecraft is impossible.”

They went silent for a while.

Sheng Xianfu looked at the design sketches on the table, and suddenly, he sighed and reached out to press the cigarette butt into the ashtray.

“I’m going to find Professor Lu.”

He scrunched the paper into a ball and stuffed it in his pocket. He then stood up from his chair and walked out of the laboratory in an imposing manner…

…

When Sheng Xianfu arrived at Jin Ling University, Lu Zhou was giving students a lecture in the classroom.

More specifically, a quantum mechanics lecture.

Sheng Xianfu quietly walked into the lecture hall through the back door. When he saw the crowd, he couldn’t help but feel amazed.

When he was teaching at the Fuyang Institute Construction Material Laboratory, he also served as a lecturer for the nearby University of Science and Technology of China. However, even though his classes were about controllable fusion and plasma physics, his classrooms had never been more than 50% full.

Of course, that was because controllable fusion was unpopular at that time, and not a lot of people took his class…

Sheng Xianfu didn’t interrupt Lu Zhou’s lecture. Instead, he found a seat in the back row and sat down. He then listened to the lecture and waited patiently for it to finish.

When he walked into the classroom, the lecture seemed to have been almost over.

During the Q&A session, a student raised his hand and asked, “Professor, can you tell us about how to understand the Yang-Mills equations from a mathematical perspective?”

When this question was asked, it immediately received approval from the other students.

It was obvious that the physics students were all interested in this topic.

“With your current level of physics knowledge, it would be too difficult to understand this question.” Lu Zhou smiled at the student who asked the question and said, “If you are interested, you can go to the old campus on May 20th and listen to my report. I’ll explain it in detail during the report.”

Someone in the audience complained, “But the entry requirements for the report is too high.”

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This was indeed a problem.

For an international academic report like this, the barrier of entry wasn’t only for the report presenter, but also for the report attendees.

When Lu Zhou heard the complaint, he contemplated it for a bit. He then smiled and said, “Then I’ll explain it right now.”

Lu Zhou cleared his throat and composed himself.

“If you want to understand the Yang-Mills equations from a mathematical perspective, we first have to know what it is.

“In a nutshell, the non-abelian symmetry group given by the Yang-Mills equations is a special type of gauge theory. Classically, this theory is similar to Maxwell’s theory, which replaces the more general tight gauge group G in the Abelian group U(1)…”

When it came to mathematics, talking wasn’t enough.

Lu Zhou picked up a piece of chalk and began to write on the blackboard.

[If 0=dA∗F, we can derive from the variation of the Lagrangian operator for passive Yang-Mills field: L=1/4g2·∫Tr(F’∗F)…]

[…]

The proof of the existence of a solution to the Yang-Mills equations was way beyond an undergraduate student’s level.

Even if Princeton professors wanted to understand the theory, they would have to start from learning the L Manifold first.

The things he was writing on the blackboard were just explanations regarding the Yang-Mills equations itself.

The most he did was incorporating some of his own ideas while explaining this proposition.

Just like this, more and more calculations appeared on the blackboard.

Lu Zhou went into a state of concentration and couldn’t stop, and he gave fewer and fewer explanations.

The students in the lecture hall were muddled.

In the beginning, they could kind of understand it, but now, they were totally defeated by this esoteric theory.

Later on, even the professors from the physics department weren’t able to keep up.

What is this guy writing about?

The more they read, the more they felt like…

Lu Zhou didn’t even seem like he was writing about physics?

Is this guy really talking about the Yang-Mills equations?

A lot of muddled professors were looking at the blackboard, and they began to have doubts about their lives.

Academician Lu was sitting in the front row of the lecture hall with a frown.

Suddenly, he noticed an important line on the blackboard, and his pupils dilated.

“The non-zero asymptotic constant in a vacuum state converts the normative group into U(1) subgroups!”

Lu Zhou is trying to use a mathematical method to explain the strong interaction in the Yang-Mills existence and mass gap!

Academician Lu’s eyes were filled with excitement.

He looked at the blackboard, full of expectations. However, when Lu Zhou wrote the final line, he seemed to have failed his expectations.

Lu Zhou suddenly stopped writing and took a step back. He looked at the calculations on the blackboard and went silent for a long time.

It seemed like he was stuck.

He scratched his head and threw away the chalk. He then turned around and looked at the muddled students before he said embarrassedly, “My bad… I seem to have gone off the rails.”

The physics professors were so full of expectations that they nearly spat out blood.

F*ck!

At least f*cking finish the calculations!

However, Professor Sheng Xianfu, who was sitting in the back row, was different from the other professors. His eyes began to light up.

Even though he didn’t understand the content of the lecture itself, he received an unexpected moment of inspiration.

“As long as the distance between nuclei is small enough…”

He muttered to himself as the inspiration flashed through his mind.

Even though this sounded a bit crazy, but he might have thought of a feasible controllable fusion reactor model.

If this was theoretically possible…

Maybe they could really achieve a new type of nuclear fusion energy at a temperature of less than 100 million degrees…