Dieter Wintgen

Dieter Wintgen (born June 11, 1957 in Arnsberg ; † August 16, 1994 , in Wallis , Swiss Alps) was a German physicist, known for his work in theoretical atomic physics and on quantum chaos.

Wintgen studied at the University of Münster with a diploma in theoretical nuclear physics and received his doctorate in 1985 under Harald Friedrich at the Technical University of Munich . In 1989 he completed his habilitation at the University of Freiburg and then spent two years at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg. Then he was a lecturer in Freiburg and in the early 1990s at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen. In August 1994 he died in a mountain accident while descending the Weisshorn in Valais.

In his dissertation, he treated the hydrogen atom in strong magnetic fields and was able to demonstrate the influence of classic periodic orbits on the quantum chaos spectrum (using Martin Gutzwiller's trace formula ). Most recently he treated the semiclassical quantization of doubly excited helium with Klaus Richter and Gregor Tanner . In doing so, he solved an old problem of the Bohr - Sommerfeld School of quantum theory, which at the time failed to calculate helium atoms.

In 1993 he received the Gustav Hertz Prize and in 1987 the Heinz Maier Leibnitz Prize .

He was a passionate mountaineer and skier.

Fonts

With Harald Friedrich Regularity and irregularity in spectra of the magnetized hydrogen atom , Phys. Rev. Lett., Vol. 57, 1986, pp. 571-574
Connection between long-range correlations in quantum spectra and classical periodic orbits , Phys. Rev. Lett., Vol. 58, 1987, pp. 1589-1592
with A. Holle, G. Wiebusch, J. Main, H. Friedrich, KH Welge Precision measurements and exact quantum mechanical calculations for diamagnetic Rydberg states in hydrogen , Journal of Physics B 19, 1986, L557 - L561
with Friedrich Perturbed Rydberg series of autoionizing resonances , Physical Review A 35, 1987, pp. 1628-1633
with Friedrich Correspondence of unstable periodic orbits and quasi-Landau modulations , Physical Review A 36, 1987, pp. 131-142.
with Friedrich The hydrogen atom in a uniform magnetic field - an example of chaos , Physics Reports, Volume 183, 1989, pp. 37-79
with Klaus Richter, Gregor Tanner: The semiclassical helium atom , Chaos, Volume 2, 1992, 19-33
with Tanner Quantization of chaotic systems , Chaos, Volume 2, 1992, 53
with Richter, Tanner The semiclassical helium atom , in Quantum Chaos: Varenna on Lake Como (July / August 1991), North Holland 1993
with Richter Calculation of planetary atom states , Journal of Physics B, Volume 24, 1991, L565-571
with Richter Stable planetary atoms configurations , Phys. Rev. Lett., 65, 1990, 1965

The hydrogen atom in a strong magnetic field [Munich] 1985, DNB 870638874 (Dissertation Technical University of Munich 1985, 131 pages).

Web links

Obituary, Physikalische Blätter 1994, 1159, pdf

Individual evidence

^ Predrag Cvitanović A Brief History of Chaos , pdf . Bohr tried his hand at it in 1916, as did his student Hendrik Anthony Kramers and Sommerfeld's student Werner Heisenberg (before the development of quantum mechanics) and Wolfgang Pauli . The attempts remained unsuccessful, as Max Born stated in his lectures on atomic mechanics in 1925. According to Cvitanovic, their failure was based on a then poor understanding of classical mechanics.

personal data
SURNAME	Wintgen, Dieter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German physicist
DATE OF BIRTH	June 11, 1957
PLACE OF BIRTH	Arnsberg
DATE OF DEATH	August 16, 1994
Place of death	Canton of Valais , Switzerland

[1] Predrag Cvitanović A Brief History of Chaos , pdf . Bohr tried his hand at it in 1916, as did his student Hendrik Anthony Kramers and Sommerfeld's student Werner Heisenberg (before the development of quantum mechanics) and Wolfgang Pauli . The attempts remained unsuccessful, as Max Born stated in his lectures on atomic mechanics in 1925. According to Cvitanovic, their failure was based on a then poor understanding of classical mechanics.