Quantum Club on “Diamonds and pencils”

Last Thursday 16 November, Prof. Louk Rademaker and Ivo Gabrovski gave a talk at the Quantum Club of the University of Geneva. It started with a warm-up talk by Ivo Gabrovski, who talked about electrons in a periodic potential, Bloch’s theorem and how quantum mechanics enters the game when one talks about electronic and magnetic properties of materials! The main talk was by Louk Rademaker, focusing on the unusual properties of one of the most common elements on earth: carbon. For example, carbon exists as diamonds, whose defects are used for building quantum computers. And we will look at pencils: there, we find graphene, which (if treated right!) can become superconducting, or a topological insulator, or a relativistic metal. You can view a recording of the talk here: