„Muszę mieć maskę, wściekłą maskę”. Polemika z Marią Anną Potocką

Polemicising with Maria A. Potocka’s view, the author reflects on the problem of mask and facial expression in the life and work of S.I. Witkiewicz. They appear here as an expression of philosophy of man, a specific feature of the personality of the author of Szewcy [The Shoemakers] whose whole life, artistic and philosophical activity was marked by “facial expression”. The article also reminds the unusually important texts of Stefan Szuman, Witkacy’s friend, who points to the essence of Witkacy’s portraits. The last question discussed in this article is the problem of ascribing to Witkacy of the authorship of most of the photographs in which he is presented (since they are a documentation of his artistic creations) while actually the authors of these photographs are a dozen or so photographer friends of Witkacy

Fano resonances and decoherence in transport through quantum dots

A tunable microwave scattering device is presented which allows the controlled variation of Fano line shape parameters in transmission through quantum billiards. We observe a non-monotonic evolution of resonance parameters that is explained in terms of interacting resonances. The dissipation of radiation in the cavity walls leads to decoherence and thus to a modification of the Fano profile. We show that the imaginary part of the complex Fano q-parameter allows to determine the absorption constant of the cavity. Our theoretical results demonstrate further that the two decohering mechanisms, dephasing and dissipation, are equivalent in terms of their effect on the evolution of Fano resonance lineshapes.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures, submitted to Physica E (conference proceedings

An above-barrier narrow resonance in ¹⁵F

Intense and purified radioactive beam of post-accelerated $^{14}$O was used to study the low-lying states in the unbound $^{15}$F nucleus. Exploiting resonant elastic scattering in inverse kinematics with a thick target, the second excited state, a resonance at E$\_R$=4.757(6)(10)~MeV with a width of $\Gamma$=36(5)(14)~keV was measured for the first time with high precision. The structure of this narrow above-barrier state in a nucleus located two neutrons beyond the proton drip line was investigated using the Gamow Shell Model in the coupled channel representation with a $^{12}$C core and three valence protons. It is found that it is an almost pure wave function of two quasi-bound protons in the $2s\_{1/2}$ shell.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, 1 table, Submitted to Phys. Lett.

The Plum and the Tacet. On Schulz and Witkacy

The paper focuses on the relationship between Schulz and Witkacy. According to Jerzy Ficowski, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz “was the first great enthusiast of Schulz’s fiction.” Conducting an in-depth interview with Schulz and publishing a critical essay on his poetics, Witkacy turns out to be a precursor-reader who anticipated the writer’s future fame. How did Witkacy read Schulz’s Cinnamon Shops and what did the beginning of the two authors’ friendship look like? Here, a short poem, To Schulz, written by Witkiewicz on December 31, 1934 in reference to an illustration from The Booke of Idolatry, is a pretext to consider the fascination with boundary situations, which was common to both writers