Ultra Low Temperatures in Lancaster

The last stop this summer was Lancaster, UK, for a conference (see if you can find me in the photo) on low temperature physics, which involved fascinating topics like superconductivity and superfluidity, and attendees from Finland to Japan.

Main takeaways:

1. Lancaster is in a geographically interesting place. I flew into Manchester, and took the train for an hour to Lancaster. Beautiful English countryside along the way. Lancaster itself has an old town charm, but also some great new construction along the iconic George Quay waterfront.

   
   

   I had three options for the one afternoon off during the conference: Manchester (the soccer stadium), Glasgow (George Square and other historical buildings around the train station), and the Lake District (the magnificent Lake Windermere, Wordsworth House). Glasgow won, and it was quite grand.

   
   

2. The University of Lancaster has an extensive and verdant campus, set a little apart from

the city. The layout is nonintuitive (even the graduate students admitted getting around

campus was hard). After four days of practice, I still could not make my way to the

breakfast location (just five minutes from my dorm) without getting lost. (Google maps

not only did not help, sometimes it hindered).

Excitement was added to the process by the fact that some rooms on campus were not

numbered, roadside maps often had North pointing downward or to the side, and there

were unexpected blocks due to extensive construction happening all over campus taking

advantage of the fact that students were away for summer vacation.

3. The physics really kicked in when the visitors were taken for a tour of the labs on site. Lancaster has been a pioneer in the studies of low temperature physics and it was amazing to see the liquid Helium cryostats, which can reach a millionth of a degree above absolute zero (these are the temperatures at which quantum effects such as superconductivity and superfluidity can be observed). Nowadays, these cryostats have many uses, including enabling a quantum computer.

   
   

   The grad student taking us around pointed out that Helium was now being stored in what used to be beer barrels (you can see them up on the wall in this video). The whole lab reminded me of the interior of a nuclear submarine: full of knobs, dials, gauges and log books.

   
   

   Such a large accumulation of equipment and expertise rarely happens in one fell swoop. A handful of people had the vision a while ago (to make Lancaster a powerhouse in low temperature physics) and it was impressive to hear about the contributions of people past and senior who kept up the mission over generations.

   
   

   Particularly being remembered by all was Prof. George Pickett, who passed away last year. In addition to developing the low temperature laboratories at Lancaster, he had mentored many of the attendees at the conference.

   
   

   Afterword

   
   

   While low temperature was the theme of the conference, there was, in keeping with general European practice, no air conditioning in the dorms. It was a good thing that the weather was pleasant throughout.