Andreas Otto (physicist)

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Andreas Otto (born October 23, 1936 in Dresden ; † December 10, 2018 ) was a German solid-state physicist (surface physics). He taught at the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf .

Otto studied physics from 1956 at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich with a diploma in 1962 and a doctorate in 1965 (plasma oscillations of bound electrons: the characteristic energy loss of 3.6 eV in thin silver foils). He then worked as an assistant in Munich and as a post-doctoral student at the University of Western Australia in Perth in 1969/70 . After completing his habilitation in Munich (surface plasma oscillations stimulated by electrons and light), he was a lecturer there from 1973. From 1974 to 1977 he was at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart and from 1977 held the chair for surface science at the University of Düsseldorf. In 2002 he retired.

Otto configuration for optical excitation and investigation of surface plasmons: The light is coupled in and out through a glass prism, whereas the surface plasmons are excited on the surface of a metal, which is separated from the prism by a very thin layer of air.

In 1968 he described the first surface plasmon - polaritons (surface plasmon polariton, SPP). The related arrangement of glass prism and metal surface is referred to as Otto arrangement or Otto configuration after him .

In 1974 he received the Walter Schottky Prize for the investigation of surface excitations in solids using the method of attenuated total reflection (ATR).

In 1986 he was visiting scholar at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in Berlin and at Yale University , in 1994 at the University of Tōhoku and at the National Institute of Advanced Interdisciplinary Research in Tsukuba and in 1997 at the University of Paris-South .

As a member of the Energy Working Group of the German Physical Society (DPG), Otto co-authored the DPG's statements on climate protection and energy supply in Germany (2005) and electricity : the key to a sustainable and climate-friendly energy system (2010). In January 2006, he gave a public lecture at Xiamen University for cooperation between China and Germany to reduce CO 2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Obituary notice ( Memento from August 12, 2019 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ a b Michael Arnold, Lothar Ley, Henning Neddermeyer, Christian Pettenkofer: Obituary for Andreas Otto . In: Physics Journal . tape 18 , no. 3 , 2019, p. 66 .
  3. ↑ Andreas Otto: Excitation of nonradiative surface plasma waves in silver by the method of frustrated total reflection . In: Journal of Physics . 216, Aug 1, 1968, pp. 398-410. doi : 10.1007 / BF01391532 .
  4. ^ Stefan A. Maier: Plasmonics: Fundamentals and Applications . Springer, New York 2007, ISBN 978-0-387-37825-1 , doi : 10.1007 / 0-387-37825-1 .
  5. ↑ Walter Schottky Prize 1974. Accessed March 13, 2020 .
  6. ↑ Walter Blum et al .: Climate protection and energy supply in Germany 1990 - 2020 . Ed .: Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft eV Bad Honnef September 2005 ( dpg-physik.de [accessed April 7, 2020]).
  7. ↑ Walter Blum et al .: Electricity: Key to a sustainable and climate-friendly energy system . Ed .: Martin Keilhacker, Hardo Bruhns. Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft eV, Bad Honnef June 2010 ( dpg-physik.de [accessed April 7, 2020]).
personal data
SURNAME Otto, Andreas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physicist
DATE OF BIRTH October 23, 1936
PLACE OF BIRTH Dresden
DATE OF DEATH December 10, 2018