A genius? I just love studying.

Chapter 209 The Poetry of the Universe

"The leader is right!"

The middle-aged man nodded, it was unclear whether he was genuinely convinced or bowing his head under pressure from his superiors, but this level of award was not something that the two of them could decide on their own.

"The most urgent task is to complete the transformation from laboratory to factory as soon as possible."

The middle-aged man didn't forget his main purpose for coming here: "Should we give each other a heads-up first, and put the thesis and such on hold for now?"

Why should we slow down?

“It’s best to keep this technology in our own hands,” the middle-aged man said matter-of-factly. “The West has enjoyed the benefits of technology for so many years, now it’s our turn.”

The old man scoffed, "Even if we give them the papers, do you think they can compete with us?"

"As long as the patent is applied for, they can use it if they want."

Middle-aged silence.

He admitted that his vision was not as broad as that of his superiors, but he always felt that if he could firmly hold onto this new type of semiconductor material and use it as leverage in negotiations with the West, he could obtain the greatest benefit.

But since he wasn't a leader, he eventually nodded and said, "Understood."

When is the awards ceremony?

After finishing their business, the old man suddenly asked, "Although it's not yet decided what award Chen Hui will receive, it's a foregone conclusion that he will win an award."

"It usually happens in late June."

The middle-aged man answered, but in his heart he was thinking that he should hurry up and submit the application.

There's nothing we can do; Chen Hui's achievement came at just the right time.

The date of the National Science and Technology Awards Conference is set long ago, and the list of awardees has been drafted long ago. Usually, the list is publicized in April, the final list is determined in May, and the awards are presented in June.

With the public announcement period fast approaching, and the list needing to be revised, he doesn't have much time left.

"Three more months! I'm getting impatient to meet this talented young man."

The old man chuckled self-deprecatingly.

"If you want to see him, just have him come to the capital," the middle-aged man said matter-of-factly. For an old man like him, seeing Chen Hui was just a matter of a word.

The old man waved his hand, "Don't disturb the young people doing scientific research, I don't have that kind of face."

"See you at the conference."

……

In his office, Chen Hui gazed out the window at the world, as if he were looking at a magic mirror. The mirror was inscribed with the Yang-Mills equation, and it reflected a perfectly symmetrical mathematical universe.

But the reality is that everything is in pieces.

The massless particle phantom in the mirror is completely out of place compared to the massive protons in reality.

Academician E Weinan has completed the writing of the paper on gallium oxide materials, and the patent application is underway. In fact, the patent application from China is already in the approval process. This is a special case.

Now we're just waiting for the patent to be approved so we can submit it to the journal *Nature*.

Ultimately, Chen Hui chose to submit to Nature. Compared to Science, which focuses on applied fields such as science policy and education, Nature pays more attention to breakthroughs in basic disciplines such as life sciences, physics, and chemistry.

Academician E Weinan and his team are now continuing their collaboration with Professor Xiao Meng to conduct research on other materials.

Semiconductor materials have made tremendous progress, and the entire industry will need at least five to ten years to digest this achievement. Even if they develop even higher-performance semiconductors, it will take a while for everyone to digest them.

Furthermore, the model is not generated out of thin air; it requires a large amount of data input. Achieving further breakthroughs in gallium oxide is not an easy task.

However, the application of this model to other simple materials has been unexpectedly successful. It is said that Academician E Weinan and his team have synthesized a new type of high-temperature resistant material that has surpassed the most advanced ceramic materials currently available, with a temperature resistance of up to 2,000 degrees Celsius.

Meanwhile, the industrialization of gallium oxide has been put on the agenda. A mysterious department has contacted Professor Xiao Meng and Academician E Weinan, and the two sides are actively promoting the industrialization of gallium oxide.

Chen Hui did not participate in these experiments, nor did he intend to continue participating in subsequent experiments. The model was there, and anyone who needed to use it could use it. It was foreseeable that the success in semiconductor materials would set off a frenzy and probably bring about earth-shattering changes to the world.

However, none of this is of much concern to Chen Hui for the time being, as he has focused all his energy on proving the quality gap.

He had already completed the construction of the nonperturbation theory framework earlier. By integrating the path integral of quantum field theory, the nonlinear techniques of geometric analysis, and the braid group concept in topology, he regarded the infinite-dimensional gauge field space as a dynamic fiber bundle, whose curvature fluctuations directly encode the mass generation mechanism.

He is like a weaver, weaving quantum folds of a gauge field with topological threads, the density of which corresponds to the size of the mass gaps.

Chen Hui has been stuck at this juncture for a long time, and there are some key points he hasn't figured out yet.

Perhaps, the only option is to continue improving one's skills and wait until the time is right.

Chen Hui took a deep breath, stopped rushing, and buried himself in studying papers in the relevant field.

dong dong dong...

Looking back, I saw Chloe standing at the door, holding a stack of papers.

"come in."

Chen Hui nodded. Although Chloe and Li Zehan are still conducting materials science research with Academician E Weinan and his team, Chloe will still come to Chen Hui at 3 pm as agreed before whenever they encounter problems.

"Teacher, we have encountered difficulties in the process of industrialization."

Chloe looked dejected.

Academician E Weinan painted a wonderful picture for them, but unfortunately, this picture encountered great difficulties in the very first step.

The industrial yield of gallium oxide is less than 20%.

This level of technology is simply not capable of achieving true industrialization; the cost is too high!

Industrialization differs from experimental preparation; it requires mass production, lower costs, and the simplest possible production steps...

Although Yang Chi succeeded on his first try in the lab, the cost of producing such a wafer was as high as 500 yuan, and that didn't even include the cost of equipment wear and tear.

This is clearly unacceptable for industrialization.

"tell me the story."

Chen Hui was also struggling with the quality gap problem for a long time, so it would be good for him to change his mindset.

"There are too many problems!"

Chloe sighed softly, "Gallium oxide crystal growth requires precise control of the temperature gradient to ±0.1℃, but current industrial equipment simply cannot reach this level, only around ±0.5℃, which leads to an increase in the density of grain boundary defects."

“When using the vertical Bridgman process, we rely on platinum-rhodium crucibles, but existing crucibles are prone to oxidation and deformation at high temperatures, resulting in a very short lifespan and frequent replacements that lead to process interruptions.”

Chloe poured out her grievances to Chen Hui like beans spilling from a bamboo tube.

Chen Hui had heard about these things; the reason why Elder E and his team developed new heat-resistant materials was to solve the problem of crucible lifespan.

"Recently, Professor E has indeed achieved good results. The crucible is fine, but the 8-inch wafer is prone to stress cracks due to the difference in lattice expansion coefficients during rapid cooling. The defect density is as high as 10 cm, which is no longer affecting the device's lifespan. It simply cannot be used normally..."

"Wait, what did you say?"

A flash of inspiration struck Chen Hui, and he raised his hand to interrupt Chloe.

"Huh?" Chloe looked at Chen Hui with a confused expression in her clear blue eyes, wondering if she had said something wrong.

"Lattice expansion coefficient?"

"That's it, the crystal lattice!"

Chen Hui muttered to himself, then turned around excitedly and sat down at the desk. He picked up a pen and began to quickly deduce on the draft paper. "That's right, the vacuum in the real world is not empty, but a superfluid filled with quantum fluctuations. The existence of mass gaps suggests that the vacuum may have undergone some kind of phase transition, like water freezing!"

"Therefore, we can take the concept of topological order from condensed matter physics, treat the low-energy state of the Yang-Mills field as a kind of quantum crystal, and introduce a variant of the superconducting bandgap equation..."

These days, Chen Hui has been conducting research on materials science and is already very familiar with the relevant concepts, but he has never connected them with the mass gap problem.

Just now, he was still immersed in thinking about the quality gap problem, but Chloe's words woke him up from his reverie, and a flash of inspiration suddenly appeared in Chen Hui's mind like lightning.

Chloe stared at Chen Hui in disbelief, not knowing what had happened.

But she didn't disturb Chen Hui. Although she had never experienced such a state of enlightenment, she was still an academic and had probably heard of it. She simply came up behind Chen Hui quietly and watched him write down one formula after another on the draft paper.

Δ(g) = ∫GDAeS[A] Topological charge (A)
Okay, I don't understand it at all...

Chloe felt dizzy, but she still stood quietly behind Chen Hui, staring at him without blinking.

A silent smile appeared on Chen Hui's face. In his eyes, the vacuum was like a sparkling diamond, with quantum sparks of mass imprisoned in its lattice defects!
The road ahead is clear. The difficulty of the Yang-Mills equations stems from the infinite degrees of freedom in its solution space, but he had already solved this problem when proving its existence.

All that is needed is to project the gauge field of four-dimensional spacetime onto a two-dimensional quantum membrane, analyze it using conformal field theory tools, and then reconstruct the four-dimensional mass gap in reverse.

By employing a gauge-gravitational dual deformation operation, the computationally difficult strongly coupled problem is transformed into a geometric flow equation in high-dimensional spacetime.

Next, we need to solve this equation.

At this moment, Chen Hui was like a demon wielding dimensional scissors, cutting the infinite tangled mess into a high-dimensional geometric sculpture, the weight of which was the mass gap.

He had completely lost track of time and was utterly immersed in this new world that had opened its arms to him.

Chloe turned on the room light with minimal noise, then closed the door and wrote "In seclusion, please do not disturb" on it before going to the supermarket, buying some Snickers bars and instant noodles, and returning to Chen Hui's office to ensure that Chen Hui could have a meal as soon as he woke up.

When she returned to her office, Chen Hui was still engrossed in the simulation.

Li Zehan and Wang Qiming both came once during this period, but left after seeing the note on the door.

The sun rises in the east and sets in the west, then rises again in the east. When the first ray of sunlight shines through the window onto the desk, Chen Hui finally puts down his pen.

The golden sunlight shone on the draft paper and also illuminated Chen Hui's eyes, allowing him to see clearly the moment when quality was born with the eye of mathematics.

The vacuum is like a quantum ocean, where the torrents of gauge fields imprison themselves in topological vortices, forming stable mass solitary waves. Protons and neutrons are no longer point particles, but geometric waves surging on the vacuum structure, their mass determined by the minimum height of the wave crest. The proof of the mass gap is transformed into a line of inequalities engraved on the foundation of spacetime.

m_gap≥/c·||Vacuum topological rigidity||
With Chloe's help, Chen Hui finally won this most brilliant jewel in the fields of mathematics and physics.

Moreover, he also deduced the possible upper limit of dark energy from the formula for mass gaps, completely overturning the boundaries of mathematics and physics.

Chen Hui felt that he was not solving equations, but translating the poetry of the universe, and the mass gap was just the first rhyme!
"Thank you, Chloe."

Chen Hui stood up and looked at Chloe with a bright, sunny smile.

If it weren't for Chloe, it might have taken him several more months to fully understand this issue.

"what?"

Chloe faced the sun, looking at the boy backlit in front of her. Her cheeks flushed, her heart pounded, and she was at a loss for words.

"Did you prepare these snacks?"

Chen Hui didn't notice Chloe's unusual behavior. When he saw the Snickers and instant noodles on the table next to him, he was overjoyed. He hadn't eaten for two days and two nights and was so hungry that he was almost dizzy.

Click.

A bite of Snickers sent a warm feeling into my stomach, instantly energizing me.

Boom boom boom!
There was another knock on the office door.

Chloe finally snapped out of her reverie, and a surge of anger rose within her.

The office door was flung open with a hiss. "Didn't it say 'Do Not Disturb'? Is there any more...?"

Before she could finish speaking, she saw Wang Qiming standing at the door, his eyes wide and frozen in place. Her cursing voice trailed off until it was barely audible.

"you……"

Wang Qiming glanced at Chloe, whose face was flushed, and then at Chen Hui, who was showing off his Snickers bar in the office.

"Dean, I still have to say, even though you are the dean, there are some details you still need to pay attention to."

After a brief moment of hesitation, Chloe spoke her mind.

Wang Qiming was also a little embarrassed, feeling awkward for having interrupted someone's good time. "I really had something urgent to attend to..."

"Even if there's an emergency, no matter how important it is, you can't interrupt a mathematician's inspiration."

Chloe said with a serious expression, "If we interrupt the teacher's train of thought, we'll have to wait decades more to solve the Yang-Mills equation."

"What? You've cracked the Yang-Mills equation?"

Wang Qiming instantly grasped the key phrase. His sharp eyes glanced at the draft paper on the desk behind Chen Hui, and then his face lit up with elation. "You've proven the mass gap problem?"

He realized he had probably misunderstood.

"Ah."

Chen Hui nodded. The office door opened inwards, and he naturally saw the sign on the door that read, "In seclusion, please do not disturb." He greatly appreciated Chloe's thoughtfulness and agreed with her statement. If his inspiration had been interrupted at that time, it would have been an extremely unpleasant experience.

“I think Chloe is right…”

Before Chen Hui could finish speaking, Wang Qiming rushed into the office and headed toward the stack of draft papers.

After staring at it for a while, Wang Qiming turned to Chen Hui with a hint of helplessness, "Are you sure?"

There was nothing he could do; he simply couldn't understand it.

"There shouldn't be any problems!"

Chen Hui was quite confident in his proof.

"You keep surprising me!"

Wang Qiming looked at Chen Hui's youthful face and clicked his tongue in amazement.

If proving the existence problem of Yang-Mills equations was only a possibility for Chen Hui to win the Fields Medal, then now that he has completed the full proof of the Yang-Mills equations, Chen Hui is a shoo-in for the Fields Medal.

An 18-year-old Fields Medal winner will break the record for the youngest Fields Medal winner. The current youngest Fields Medal winner is Jean-Pierre Serre, who was 27 years old when he won the award. Chen Hui pushes this record forward by a full 9 years!
It is foreseeable that this record may never be broken.

After being lost in thought for a while, Wang Qiming finally remembered why he had come: "The annual meeting report needs to be submitted, and today is the last day!"

If it weren't for this matter, he wouldn't have knocked on Chen Hui's door so rashly.

Chen Hui only then remembered this matter. He had originally prepared his report, but now he was hesitant about which achievement he should report at the annual meeting of the Chinese Mathematical Society.

(End of this chapter)