Chapter 78 Ever since Fan Ji'an made a high-profile announcement of the successful development of the domestically produced quantum chip "Beichen-1", he has become a household name and a hero in China overnight, and has become a god on the Internet.
News reports and rumors flew around, creating a multi-layered image of a legendary scientist who was dedicated to serving the country, worked tirelessly, and was approachable and respectable.
People are enthusiastically discussing the various anecdotes, interesting stories, and tear-jerking tales of this father of China's chip industry. Anyone who dares to express doubts or criticisms about Fan Ji'an will be bombarded and condemned by various media outlets and countless netizens.
In the realm of public opinion, even Gao Xiao, who knows Fan Ji'an's true colors, would not directly confront him at this opportune moment.
However, Fan Ji'an clearly understands the art of leveraging external forces. In an exclusive interview with state media, he earnestly expressed his hope that, given the current stalemate in the international situation, Chinese research institutions in the chip industry could set aside their disputes, cooperate, and promote the optimization and upgrading of quantum chips to quickly join the ranks of international leaders. This subtly implies that some individuals are hindering the innovative development of chip technology due to self-interest and personal emotions.
These words were spoken in a subtle and cryptic manner. Before netizens could even begin to unravel the mystery, someone promptly revealed that the photonic chip project team had repeatedly refused to cooperate with Academician Fan Ji'an's team. Furthermore, when the Yanda Quantum Information Research and Development Center urgently needed to borrow an assistant professor from the university to assist in its research, Ji Zhixing used his personal connections to obstruct the professor from performing his duties.
This revelation quickly garnered many likes.
One after another, several industry insiders, either directly or indirectly, revealed various inside information, pointing the finger at Gao Xiao and Ji Zhixing!
Suddenly, the photonic chip project team was caught in a media storm. Incited by certain individuals, criticism poured in.
Compared to Gao Xiao, Ji Zhixing is more well-known online, so public opinion has gradually focused on him.
"Speechless. They have absolutely no sense of the bigger picture. Why refuse to cooperate?"
"They are either arrogant and disdainful of cooperation, or they are self-important and unwilling to cooperate."
"Oh well, after all, he's China's first Fields Medal winner, so a little arrogance is understandable, lalala—"
"There's no need to be so sarcastic. Judging from previous interviews, Ji Zhixing doesn't seem like an arrogant and selfish person."
"You can know a person's face but not their heart. In front of the media, who doesn't know to put on a respectable act?"
"Not at all. Just based on his choice of Huaxia Science back then, I believed in his character."
"The dragon slayer eventually became a dragon himself. Now that he has achieved fame and success, he has forgotten his original aspirations."
"I heard that Ji Zhixing refused to cooperate because he was worried that Academician Fan would steal his research results."
"Tsk, Academician Fan is capable of developing quantum chips, so his expertise in this field is definitely superior to Ji Zhixing's. Ji Zhixing is being far too stingy with his knowledge!"
"You can't compare them like that. The logical architectures of quantum chips and photonic chips are completely different. It's like carrots and radishes. Although they look similar, one is from the Apiaceae family and the other is from the Brassicaceae family. They are not related at all."
"But cooperation is always a good thing, at least it allows us to share resources."
"If he works alone and works in isolation, when will Ji Zhixing be able to develop the so-called photonic chip?"
"If photonic chips are successfully developed, quantum chips will inevitably have to take a backseat. What benefit would this bring to Academician Fan Ji'an? Academician Fan doesn't care about gains and losses, yet Ji Zhixing is so narrow-minded."
...
For a long time, the critical crisis of lacking domestic chips and core technologies, coupled with the difficulties of international blockades, has made all Chinese people deeply yearn for the early development of their own high-end chips. The advent of "Beichen-1" ignited the patriotic enthusiasm of everyone, and the entire public opinion environment was one of jubilation at finally being able to hold our heads high.
When Ji Zhixing stood in opposition to Fan Ji'an, the "father of China's chip industry," many people unhesitatingly supported him. Even though some sober netizens rationally pointed out that an independent research institution has full autonomy in its choices, and many master's and doctoral students who benefited from Ji Zhixing's thesis analysis course explained research competition and cooperation from an insider's perspective, they could not stop the overwhelming online criticism of Ji Zhixing and the photonic chip project team.
Ji Zhixing was in a good mood, but Deng Yi and others were somewhat restless. Gao Xiao simply took the entire photonic chip project team into seclusion. Once the network cable was connected, they were almost completely isolated from the world, and no outside wind or rain could blow in.
Sometimes, pressure is the best motivation. Everyone is working hard, work efficiency is multiplied, and the research and development of photonic chips is making considerable progress every day.
Inside the laboratory, Deng Zhi was summarizing yesterday's experimental results to Ji Zhixing: "Our group has been able to increase the decay rate of nonlinear interaction strength with order from 10⁻¹⁰ to 10⁻⁵, but the problem is that it is still not easy to observe high-efficiency nonlinear effects with order greater than three on integrated photonic chips."
Enhancing nonlinear interactions between photons using micro- and nano-optical structures on integrated photonic chips is currently a hot research topic in integrated optics and nonlinear optics internationally. Therefore, Ji Zhixing has been studying and researching in this area recently, and just last night he came up with a new idea.
As soon as he heard Deng Ji mention this issue, he opened the experimental plan he had written the night before.
"Do you think it's possible to utilize the inherent strong second-order and third-order low-order effects of silicon-based materials to artificially control a nonlinear optical network formed by cascading multiple low-order processes, thereby achieving photon nonlinear interactions of any form and order?"
Although he said "can it be done?", Chih-Hsing Chi had actually tried it in the system laboratory. This method can avoid modifying the nonlinear response of silicon-based materials at the atomic scale. As long as the geometry of micro- and nano-devices is controlled, a highly efficient and reconfigurable high-order nonlinear process can be achieved, which is quite perfect!
Deng scratched his head and thought about it, and also felt it was worth a try.
As soon as Deng left, Yu Zhuli came over with a thick notebook of drafts.
"Given, the synergistic effect of multiple nonlinear processes within the microcavity."
Ji Zhixing took a look and saw: [PRL126, 133601; PRA98, 013854]...
Yes, this matches the experimental data he previously obtained from the systems lab. Therefore, if the quality factor of the microcavity is further improved, the enhancement factor of the fourth-order nonlinear effect could reach over 10 million, marking another significant step forward in photonic chip development!
After explaining the data, Yu Zhuli went back to his desk to calculate new approaches to single-photon level quantum devices.
Ji Zhixing looked around and sighed from the bottom of his heart, he was really, really, really lucky!
The concept of photonic chips was actually proposed as early as 1996. However, due to limitations in structure and materials, it has not seen significant development.
However, in this experimental building, the structural problems were solved by the new optical tweezers technology designed some time ago, and the materials were made possible by the silicon substrate prepared by the alchemy team. The two biggest obstacles were solved with appropriate solutions.
Ji Zhixing couldn't help but feel that he was the chosen one, with incredible luck! Overjoyed, he couldn't help but think of the paper he had submitted a few days ago, hoping that this good luck would continue.
...
On the other side of the ocean, in the editorial office of *Science*, editor-in-chief Taylor and external reviewer Eric are exchanging peer review comments on a paper.
“To be honest, I can’t give you a definitive answer,” Eric said, stroking his chin and frowning. “Achieving full control over the elements of a quantum walk, while maintaining a two-qubit gate manipulation precision of 99.67%, is almost impossible. However, Ji Zhixing proposed using the transmission resonant cavity in a superconducting quantum bit system to realize a data bus with non-adjacent quantum bit coupling, which is a completely new physical system…”
Taylor also frowned deeply, because his understanding of the quantum chip field was not very in-depth, and he only understood a small part of Eric's eloquent analysis. But as the editor-in-chief, he only needed to respect the opinions of the external reviewers, which were either "Reject" or "ept."
However, Eric, as an external auditing expert, was unable to provide a definitive opinion this time.
Taylor knew that the main reason Eric was being so cautious this time was that the paper was written by Ji Zhixing.
Last year, the farcical incident that occurred in *Recent Advances in Mathematics* left a deep impression on everyone. Even now, editors of various academic journals still relish the memory, bringing it up to laugh about it at almost every tea party or dinner party.
However, Taylor honestly asked himself, if Ji Zhixing had chosen *Science* for his first submission, there's a possibility he might have been rejected. After all, the Navier-Stokes equations are incredibly profound and obscure, and Ji Zhixing's resume at the time was practically illiterate in the eyes of the journal editors.
However, after the solution to the Navier-Stokes equations was recognized by mathematicians worldwide, and after Ji Zhixing won the Fields Medal, no one would look down on him because of his age, qualifications, or nationality.
Therefore, Ji Zhixing's paper submitted to Science received extraordinary attention.
After clarifying the main direction of the paper, Taylor specially invited Professor Eric from the University of Wisconsin to serve as an external reviewer—Eric and his team's research focuses on quantum computing of single-bit quantum logic gates.
Unexpectedly, Eric ultimately gave an ambiguous judgment.
Taylor said carefully, "So, from your professional perspective, the unreasonable aspects of this paper could be fallacies, or it could be an unprecedented breakthrough?"
Eric nodded: "That's right."
Generally, if there are parts of a submitted paper that the editor cannot determine, it will either be rejected outright or the author will be required to undergo a major revision.
However, solving the Navier-Stokes equations bestowed upon Ji Zhixing a thick halo of genius. Genius is an inexplicable phenomenon, and no one dares to deny the possibility of Ji Zhixing achieving a breakthrough in the field of quantum chips.
No one wants to be the second Edmund, blind to reason and a laughingstock for eternity.
Therefore, Taylor pondered for a long time before finally deciding on the ept. If the paper received widespread criticism after publication, it could simply be retracted. Retracting a paper after publication due to discovered errors is a very common practice in major journals.
...
Soon after the latest issue of Science was published, Ji Zhixing's paper was discovered.
Last year, Ji Zhixing's feat of publishing seven papers in top international journals in one go was once again brought to mind. Now, opinions online are divided regarding Ji Zhixing's latest publication in a top journal.
"Isn't Ji Zhixing researching photonic chips? How come his paper is about quantum chips?"
"He's just taking advantage of academic research. He keeps his own photonic chip hidden, but he doesn't hesitate to cite Academician Fan's research results at all."
"This is just mindless criticism. Publicly published papers are generally recognized as citationable, and everyone wants them to be cited as much as possible, since the number of citations is an important factor in judging the value of a paper."
"Well, in any case, I admire Ji Zhixing's ability to write papers."
The news quickly faded from the trending topics, but a few days later, when it had already lost its momentum online, a new piece of news brought it back to the top of the trending topics—Ji Zhixing's paper had been retracted!
This time, the internet is filled with ridicule and criticism of Ji Zhixing.
Ji Zhixing looked at the retraction notice in his email and smiled with satisfaction.
A note from the author:
The academic viewpoints in this chapter reference "Titan Photonics Releases New 10Gbps XFP" and "Research Progress of Silicon-Based Photonic Modulators".
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