Tsinghua University Art Trooupe and Alumni Celebrate Tsinghua’s 106th Anniversary in Various Forms
On April 29th, teachers, alumi and students from Art Trooupe held a lot of art activities to celebrate Tsinghua’s 106th anniversary. On the square of New Tsinghua Xuetang, the Ballroom Dance Team made a show. In the grove, Tsinghua University Teacher Choir, Student Choir and Alumni Choir gave a ringing performance of 18 songs. On the lawn in front of the Gongziting, Student and Alumni Chinese Orchestra held a lawn concert. All activities were conducted with great festivity, each attracting a large audience.
On April 30th, there will be a Square Carnival by Tsinghua Dance Team in front of the Auditorium.
The Suanbiao in Tsinghua Bamboo Slips：the World’s Oldest Decimal Multiplication Table Awarded by Guinness World Record
The Suanbiao, a bamboo-slip manuscript of twenty-one bamboo slips in the Tsinghua collection, is a decimal multiplication table for numbers up to 99.5 when it is reconstructed in the correct order. It was awarded the Guinness World Record for “the oldest decimal multiplication table” in the world on April 23, 2017.
“The Suanbiao filled a historical gap for mathematical documents in the Pre-Qin period”, said Guo Shuchun, Director of the Chinese Society of the History of Mathematics.
The Tsinghua University collection of bamboo-slip manuscripts, is a famous collection of Chinese texts with brush-written graphs on bamboo slips, dating all the way back to the Warring States period (ca. 350BCE).
The bamboo-slip manuscripts are very important for understanding the context of the inception and development of Chinese civilization, the study of shape and structure of bamboo slips and the Chinese ancient characters.
Tsinghua’s Mathematical Sciences Discipline Celebrated its 90th Anniversary
From April 21st to the 24th, 2017, Tsinghua’s Mathematical Sciences Discipline saw countless activities being held to commemorate the Discipline’s 90th Anniversary.
Tsinghua’s Mathematical Sciences Discipline has a glorious and long history. In the early years, the Discipline made great success from 1927 to 1952. It also experienced special stages of adjustment and reconstruction from 1952 to 1979. In 1979, Tsinghua set up a Department of Applied Mathematics and then changed the name to the Department of Mathematical Sciences in 1999. This marked a new stage of vigorous development. It has been proven that with continuous efforts, this Department has developed into China’s top Department for Mathematical Sciences.
In the past decade, the Discipline has developed at a rapid and smooth pace. It has launched itself into various stages. Among them, the Mathematical Science Center was formally established in December 2009 and internationally renowned mathematician Shing-Tung Yau became the center’s director. At the end of 2014, the Ministry of Education formally approved the establishment of “Tsinghua University’s Yau Mathematical Sciences Center”. The Department of Mathematical Sciences also engaged Shing-Tung Yau as Chief Professor of “Mathematics Class of Tsinghua School”.
Artificial Nonlinearity Generated from Electromagnetic Coupling Metamolecule
On April 17th, Prof. Ji ZHOU, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, and his colleagues, published a paper entitled “Artificial Nonlinearity Generated from Electromagnetic Coupling Meta-molecule” in Physical Review Letters. This work provides a novel artificial nonlinear optical materials with a metamaterial approach based on classical electromagnetism.
Optical nonlinearity is a universal physical phenomenon arising from interactions between high-intensity light and matters, which plays an essential role in many revolutionary techniques, such as laser, optical communication, and optical information technology. However, due to the lack of clear physical picture for the description of the natural nonlinear process, the research on nonlinear optical material remains qualitative and semi-quantitative for a long time. It has been a great challenge to achieve the ambitious goal of exactly predicting and precisely designing an optical nonlinear material.
The artificial material proposed in this study is based on the coupling of localized electric and magnetic fields inside an ingeniously designed metamolecule, which breaks the symmetry of the physical states and generates the artificial optical nonlinearity. Because the nonlinearity originates entirely from the metamolecule, involving no natural nonlinear material, it can be precisely designed and configured by varying the structure. Meanwhile, the physical process of the artificial nonlinear theory is highly explicit and clear, which can be applied to a very broad electromagnetic spectrum. As demonstrated by related researches, by properly scaling the geometry of the metamolecule, it generates distinct optical nonlinearity in the regime raging from microwave to infrared. This innovative artificial mechanism offers unprecedented design freedom for the optical nonlinearity, which would significantly promote the development of new-generation light source and optical information technology, and open possibilities to a whole range of fascinating researches and applications, such as nonlinear optical lens and hologram.
Time-domain transmission spectra of the nonlinear metamolecule (a) and its frequency-domain spectrum (b); inset: frequency spectra of two meta-atoms.
Prof. Ji ZHOU is the corresponding author, and postdoc fellow Yongzheng WEN is the first author. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation.
