Earlier this year, Chris Pickard and Bartomeu Monserrat coauthored a paper which set an upper limit on the speed of sound in solids and liquids. This upper limit can be expressed purely in terms of fundamental constants. The work was carried out with Kostya Trachenko of Queen Mary University of London and Vadim Brazhkin of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
We are delighted to learn that Physics World has selected this paper as one of its 10 Breakthrough of the Year finalists for 2020.
Finalists were selected on the basis that the work represents a 'significant advance in knowledge or understanding', is of importance for scientific progress and/or development of real-world applications, and is of general interest to Physics World readers.
The full citation reads:
To Kostya Trachenko of Queen Mary University of London, Bartomeu Monserrat and Chris Pickard of the University of Cambridge and Vadim Brazhkin of the Russian Academy of Sciences for calculations showing that the upper limit on the speed of sound in solids and liquids depends on just two dimensionless quantities – the fine structure constant and the proton-to-electron mass ratio.
Physics World will announce its Breakthrough of the Year on 17 December 2020.