Quantum Physics Meets Meditation with Marcis Auzins

Get to know Marcis Auzinsh, a physicist by profession, who is currently a professor at the University of Latvia, and Head of the Department of Experimental Physics and the Laser Center.

Marcis works in the field of quantum physics and is the author of more than a hundred scientific articles published in the world's leading physics journals and several hundred conference reports. In 2005, he was a visiting professor at the University of California in Berkeley.

Marcis joined Tiina for a Beyond BAFF podcast episode to talk more about his journey in science and other aspirations in life. Listen to the full episode.

First, I really want to know, how did you decide what fields to study in the university? Often, it's a very complicated choice that influences the rest of your life.

It was actually rather simple. I had an excellent physics teacher during my school years, and as a result, for four consecutive years when I studied in secondary school, I was the absolute winner of the Physics Olympiad in Latvia and went to different international events after that. Ultimately, it somehow seemed that I didn't have any other choice but to study physics.

And how did you do with other subjects in school?

Definitely I was not the best student in my class. Many many of my classmates did better than me. But on the other hand, both science subjects and humanities subjects interested me very much, and in some of the humanities subjects I was pretty good as well.

It means that I pretended that my choice was obvious and very simple. Maybe it's only a kind of at-first approximation. In reality, of course, there were some doubts, and I think that a kind of humanitarian nature in me is still alive, and sometimes I do things in humanities as well.

What does daily life look like for doctors in physics?

It probably differs very much among the subfields of physics—if you’re more in theoretical or experimental physics.

In my case, it's always been a 50-50 combination. When I was younger, I spent a lot of time in the lab. Currently, like many professors who have Ph.D. students to supervise, and many grant applications to write, I spend more time in my office and physics lab and let my Ph.D. students, postdocs, and people working together with me do the real experiments.

And could you also tell us a bit about the time that you spent in the U.S. with the BAFF program? What did you do there and what was your focus?

I spent some time at the University of California in Berkeley long before I was there as a BAFF fellow. So it means that it was kind of a return to a very well-known place.

But this particular stay in the United States in some sense influenced my research and the research of the laser lab at the University of Latvia and my colleagues rather strongly. Because around that time, my field, which is quantum physics, experienced important changes.

If somebody asked me 10, or 15 years ago, if I was interested in applied science in sensors and this type of research, I would definitely answer no. I am interested in basic science and a kind of academic research. And then suddenly it appeared that the academic research we had been doing for many years, and on which we even published two monographs, was changing. A new research subject was coming to the field.

Before that, the research in quantum physics was focused on atoms, light atom interactions, and things like that. And then I found out that color centers and some defects in a diamond crystal behave very similarly to atoms. Plus, they are much more robust and easy to handle in harsh environments.

It seemed that the research we did in academic studies could be applied to construct more sensitive magnetometers that could substitute GPS systems, which is possible nowadays. For example, we had a project with the European State Space Agency, where we made a magnetometer laboratory prototype that could be developed into a real magnetometer and put on a spaceship.

My time in Berkley appeared to be very useful. This is how we moved from academic research to practical applications.

You mentioned that you are also interested in philosophy. How does physics and philosophy interfere in your life? How do you combine those interests?

First of all, if we speak about quantum physics, we know that many founders of quantum physics in some sense were philosophers because quantum physics asks the most difficult questions about the existence of physical reality and offers a counterintuitive view of the world.

For example, maybe some listeners have heard about Erwin Schroedinger, one of the founders of quantum physics, and his suggested paradox. It's called the Schrodinger's cat. He talked about a cat that could be alive and dead at the same time, which is kind of one of the features of quantum physics, that the quantum object can be in two separate places at the same time, and has different contradictory properties at the same time.

And of course, if you are doing research in that direction, if you are thinking about this type of situation, in some sense you are asking the question of how this universe is constructed, how this universe functions, and then the overlapping with philosophy happens kind of automatically.

I also heard that you are interested in spirituality and meditation and you've been meditating daily since your college days. What made you do it and how have you been so consistent with it?

Sometimes people ask me how I can do it each morning without any exception. Then I'm asking—you are taking a shower each morning, right? Everybody is taking shower each morning. And nobody's surprised that people can do this hygienic exercise each morning. In my case, the same goes for this mental exercise—it’s a preparation for a day with challenges.

I learned Buddhist meditation techniques in one of the Buddhist centers in Berkeley. I started to study it systematically because as somebody in experimental physics, I thought it would interesting to do experiments with my consciousness—what I can do with that, how I can control it, and to what extent I can control it.

And it was exciting, it was interesting. As I said, at some point it was not only that, and I was a little bit shy to admit to my colleagues at the university that I was meditating.

Maybe it was more complicated because at some point I got a feeling that I was maybe betraying my field, physics, natural science. Because this is something different. As you said, sometimes people call it spirituality. Sometimes people call it a mystical experience. And of course, people who are in science, usually aren’t very positive about mystical experiences.

I found that mediation can professionally help me as well because sometimes you simply need to free your mind from trying to solve a problem.

It's very hard. You are sitting at your desk and thinking that I should push further and solve it. And we know that in this way you can hardly solve any problem. And maybe you should simply switch to something else, maybe free your mind in meditation. And then suddenly, you see that your problem isn’t so difficult, and the solution is nearby. You should only somehow come out of your bubble.

Coming back to physics, what do you think are the most common questions people ask you about your field?

Maybe I can start with a misconception. Because when people think about what people, for example, in theoretical physics, do, they imagine scientists taking very large formulas, then rearranging those formulas again and again, and then claiming a Nobel Prize about something that is very, very far from reality.

How it actually happens is that you are thinking about some problem. You have your background experience, and education to do science, and you feel like the solution is somewhere out there, somewhere in the air. But it's hard to catch it. At some point, it finally lands and you can put it down.

Sometimes things are similar to what other people have done in science. But if there's really new science and new discoveries, it's very similar to art. Therefore, I’m very much against the separation of pupils in high school in the humanitarian division and those interested in science. I think that they should be mixed together.

One of the other things I do is write popular articles for different magazines, and online media, and give public lectures. And of course, then there are always two choices. I can do these things in an exciting, simple way, but it will not be the entire truth. And I can tell the audience the entire truth and it will be complicated, it will be boring, and it will be long. When I’m trying to answer the complicated questions of quantum physics, I’m always balancing the two. A totally precise explanation will be boring and probably hard to understand for people who are not in science.

As we come to the close of our conversation, what are you most excited about as regards the developments in your field today?

I'm most excited about the changes in attitude in physics. If we look at what people are getting Nobel Prizes for now, and what they got the Nobel Prize for 10 years ago, I would say that you could see some kind of romanticism coming back to physics.

People are asking very fundamental, very general, and complicated questions. They are recognized as legitimate questions, and people are rewarded by receiving Nobel Prizes for that. But, of course, the Nobel Prize is just a reflection of how the field is evaluating different activities in different directions.

With that said, do you have any specific goals regarding physics? Do you aim for a Nobel Prize or some other recognition?

Currently, I think that my task is to support the younger researchers in my department at the Laser Center, to help them find good career paths and get good, well-funded projects to continue their research.

And I think this is what people in my seniority should be focused on.

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