A site named “ResearchGate” has become one of my tools for locating papers. The site is a bit annoying at times. Sort of like Facebook, for scholarly work. There is a continual stream of “helpful” emails, and popups asking one to consider a job posting, or add a publication, etc etc. Rather like a hyperactive and gossipy personal assistant. Also, there is a lack of confidentiality — if one “follows” a particular paper, to be apprised of future citations of it, all of one’s contacts are advised that one is following that paper. So if one wants to work under the radar, then ResearchGate is not the tool for you. Be advised!
However, on the plus side: ResearchGate is excellent as a way of finding out what a person has published, who has cited it, what that person has published, and so on. I recently was looking at a paper by Neil Turok, “On quantum tunneling in real time”, and wanted to find out if anyone had cited it. Web of Science / Knowledge said not. But Google Scholar reported some related papers, and one of them led me to a paper by Carl Bender and Daniel Hook which cites the Turok paper. And that, in turn, via Hook’s ResearchGate publications list, led me to the very interesting and stimulating paper by Bender and Hook, Arxiv 1011.0121, “Quantum tunneling as a classical anomaly”.
That enables me to return to a subject I’ve been interested in for some time, whether the complex plane tangencies of the Lambert W lines with the strength contours of a quantum well, represent sensitivities which have a physical implication — for example, whether one can devise a sensor which uses that tangency. The QWIP, quantum well infrared photodetector, which is found in night vision apparatus, is an example of such a sensor. In general, a sensor can be made by conditioning a quantum well device at or near a context which changes the number of bound states or a tunneling probability, and then allowing the environment to stress the sensor — changing the energy, changing a dimension, changing temperature, and so on. Finding the Bender and Hook papers, and a couple of Turok papers, offers the possibility of a new look at that topic.
Best wishes,
Ken Roberts
31-Jan-2016
Logic, Astronomy, Science, and Ideas Too 