Alexander Markowitsch Polyakow

Alexander Markowitsch Poljakow ( Russian Александр Маркович Поляков , scientific transliteration Aleksandr Markovič Poljakov , written in English as Polyakov ; born September 27, 1945 in Moscow ) is a Russian physicist .

life and work

Polyakov studied in Moscow and then conducted research at the Landau Institute in Moscow , where he received his doctorate in 1969. From 1969 to 1989 he was Professor of Physics at the Landau Institute. He has been a professor at Princeton University since 1989, and since 1999 as Joseph Henry Professor of Physics.

With his friend Alexander Arkadjewitsch Migdal , he passed the entrance exam for the theoretical minimum at Lev Landau himself as a pupil in 1961 , who a little later had his serious car accident. With AA Migdal he independently discovered the Higgs phenomenon in 1964 in the Soviet Union, about which they also published in 1966, but found no response, since quantum field theory was no longer taken seriously in the Landau school, which was dominant in the Soviet Union at that time.

Polyakov made several important contributions to quantum field theory , including working in the field of non-Abelian gauge theory ( Yang-Mills theory ), where he introduced 't Hooft-Polyakov monopoly solutions (1974, Gerard' t Hooft also worked independently in this area). With Belawin , Schwarz and Juri Tjupkin , he found the instanton solutions in Yang Mills theories in 1975 . He also conducts research in the field of conformal field theory and string theory . In 1984 he published with Alexander Belavin and Alexander Samolodtschikow a fundamental work on conformal field theories and their classification.

The Polyakov effect in string theory is named after him. In 1981, Polyakov used it to quantize the strings as a path integral .

He was the first to find the correspondence between strings in the 5-dimensional anti-de-sitter space ( holographic principle ) and 4-dimensional supersymmetric Yang Mills theories. In the sense of “holography”, a field theory on a surface describes the physics in the volume enclosed by it (in an essay by Poljakov called “Wall of the Cave”, alluding to Plato's allegory of the cave ).

He also deals with turbulence (application of conformal field theory), with string theory cosmology and the quark confinement problem in quantum chromodynamics , which he also deals with in the string picture, after being one of the first topological explanations for was looking for this important problem, u. a. about the instantons introduced by him. In the 1970s he showed that “instanton liquids” in three-dimensional (two space, one time dimension) compact quantum electrodynamics (QED) are responsible for confinement. He also examined the application of the concepts of conformal field theory / string theory in statistical mechanics (high temperature superconductors, etc.), e.g. B. in his book Gauge fields and strings .

In 1986 he was awarded the Dirac Medal (ICTP) and the Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics , and in 1994 the Lorentz Medal . In 2004, together with Alexander Andrejew, he received the Pomeranchuk Prize of the Moscow Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics . In 2010 he was awarded the Harvey Prize of the Technion Institute in Haifa / Israel. In 1991 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 2005 . In 2011 he received the Lars Onsager Prize with Samolodtschikow and Belavin . In 2013 he received the Physics Frontiers Prize and the Fundamental Physics Prize .

literature

• Polyakov: Gauge fields and strings . Harwood Academic Publishers, 1987
• ders. Quark confinement and topology of gauge fields . In: Nuclear Physics B , Volume 120, 1977, pp. 429-458
• id. Particle spectrum in Quantum Field Theory . In: JETP Letters , Volume 20, 1974, p. 194 (t'Hooft-Polyakov-Monopol)
• ders., Belavin, A. Schwarz, Tyupkin Pseudoparticle solutions of Yang-Mills equations . In: Physics Letters B , Volume 59, 1975, p. 82 (instantons)
• ders. Quantum geometry of the bosonic string . In: Physics Letters B , Volume 103, 1981, p. 207 (Polyakov effect, path integral quantization string)
• ders. Quantum geometry of the fermionic string . In: Physics Letters B , Volume 103, 1981, p. 211 (Polyakov effect, path integral quantization string)
• ders., Belavin, Zamolodchikov Infinite conformal symmetry in two-dimensional quantum field theory . In: Nuclear Physics B , Volume 241, 1984, pp. 333-380 (conformal field theory), as preprint KISS (KEK Information Service System) for Preprints using WWW-SQL interface
• ders., Gubser, Klebanov: Gauge theory correlators from non critical string theory . In: Physics Letters B , Volume 428, 1998, pp. 105-114, arxiv : hep-th / 9802109
• ders. 2 dimensional quantum gravity and superconductivity at high ${\displaystyle T_{c}}$ . In: Les Houches Lectures , Volume 49, 1988
• ders. A view from the island . In: Hoddeson et al. a. (Ed.) The rise of the Standard Model . Cambridge University Press, 1997

See also

• AdS / CFT

Web links

• Homepage Princeton ( Memento from June 21, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
• Dirac Medal 1986 ( Memento from January 5, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
• Polyakov, Alexander M. In: inspirehep.net
• AM Polyakov . In: arXiv.org
• Biography at the APS

Some preprints in which he gives an overview of his work and his point of view:

• Polyakov: Gauge fields and spacetime . 2001, arxiv : hep-th / 0110196
• Polyakov: Beyond spacetime . 2006, arxiv : hep-th / 0602011
• Polyakov: Confinement and Liberation . 2004, arxiv : hep-th / 0407209
• Polyakov: The Wall of the Cave . 1998, arxiv : hep-th / 9809057

Remarks

1. ↑ Alexander Migdal, Memoirs
2. ↑ that means the QED calibration group U (1) is periodic, the corresponding phases are identified modulo ${\displaystyle 2\pi }$
3. ↑ Polyakov: Quark confinement and topology of gauge fields . In: Nuclear Physics B , Volume 120, 1977, pp. 429-58. Compact gauge fields and the infrared catastrophe . In: Nuclear Physics B , Volume 59, 1975, p. 82