Grigory Efimowitsch Wolowik

Grigori Jefimowitsch Wolowik ( Russian Григорий Ефимович Воловик ; English transcription Grigori E. Volovik; born September 7, 1946 in Moscow ) is a Russian theoretical physicist who deals with solid state physics. He is known for his innovative proposals for combining astroparticle physics with solid state physics.

Life

Wolowik graduated from the Physics-Technical Institute in Moscow in 1970. Since 1973 he has been at the Landau Institute in Moscow, since 1992 as a senior scientist. In 1973 he received his doctorate there (candidate title) with the work Dynamics of a particle strongly interacting with a Bose System and in 1981 he received his habilitation (Russian doctorate) with the work Topology of defects in condensed matter . In 1993 he became a professor at the Laboratory for Low Temperature Physics at the Helsinki University of Technology , but was at the same time at the Landau Institute.

In 1992 he received the Landau Prize of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 2004 he received the Simon Memorial Award in Low Temperature Physics for his fundamental research on the role of symmetry in low temperature physics and applications in cosmology, quantum gravity, quantum field theory and particle physics (laudation). From 2003 to 2006 he headed the program of the European Science Foundation Cosmology in the Laboratory . Volovik is the author of several books and over 340 scientific journal publications.

In 2001 he became a member of the Finnish Academy of Sciences and in 2007 of the Leopoldina . For 2014 he was awarded the Lars Onsager Prize .

plant

Wolowik deals with quantum fluids at low temperatures such as liquid helium ( superfluids ), unconventional superconductivity (for example in systems of heavy fermions), the physics of glasses and liquid crystals , quantum turbulence, intrinsic quantum Hall effect , coherent states in the Larmor Precession . In particular, however, he proposed novel experiments in solid-state physics to investigate phenomena in analogy to phenomena in quantum field theory and astrophysics (such as physics on the event horizon of black holes , dark energy and cosmological constants, topological defects for structure formation in the early universe). In quantum field theory, liquid helium-3 in particular is a good model of the vacuum state in elementary particle physics, with fermions as elementary excitations and bosons such as photons , gravitons , gluons as collective excitations and fundamental physical symmetry laws such as gauge and Lorentz variance as sufficient low temperatures emergent laws. In the case of helium-3, this is expressed through the loss of symmetry at high energies (gas) and the formation ( emergence ) of symmetries such as translational invariance in the superfluid state at low temperatures. He investigated many-particle problems under the aspect of the classification of their properties as topological defects in momentum space as well. For example, he considers the formation of a Fermi surface as a topological defect in momentum space, a quantized vortex, and considers another topological behavior in momentum space, the formation of a Fermi point in the A phase of the He3 quantum fluid, to be a good model of the Standard Model in particle physics.

Wolowik also proposes a solution to the problem of the cosmological constant from analogues to solid state physics, in which, in contrast to particle physics and quantum gravity, the microscopic model is precisely known.

In the investigation of particle physics analogues and phenomena in helium-3, he works with the experimenter Juri Michailowitsch Bunkow .

Fonts

• The Universe in a Helium Droplet. Clarendon Press, Oxford 2003, 2009.
• Exotic properties of superfluid Helium 3. World Scientific 1992.
• with Matt Visser and Mario Novello (eds.): Artificial Black Holes. World Scientific, 2002 (therein from Volovik: Effective Gravity and quantum vacuum in superfluids )
• with R. Huebener and N. Schopohl (eds.): Vortices in unconventional superconductors and superfluids. Springer Verlag, 2002.
• with M. Salomaa: Quantized vortices in superfluid He3. In: Reviews of Modern Physics. Vol. 59, 1987, pp. 533-613.

literature

• Biographical note in the summer school Relevant Problems in the theory of condensed state. (PDF) Zelenogorsk 2010
• Member entry of Grigory E. Volovik at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on August 10, 2015.
• Short portrait  ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) University of Tübingen on the occasion of the Kepler lecture 2007.

Web links

• Homepage in Helsinki
• Page at the Landau Institute with a list of publications

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Physics World at the price for Volovik ( Memento of the original from January 17, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ↑ Such analogues in solid state physics were first proposed by William Unruh in 1981
3. ↑ His conception of the emergence of gravitation as collective vacuum excitation is in tradition in Russia to a theory by Andrei Sakharov
4. ↑ In between there is still a phase with global U (1) and two SO (3) symmetries and, at even lower temperatures in the A phase, additional symmetries, which, according to Volovik, are analogues of the observed symmetries (Lorentz and gauge symmetries, general Covariance) of the Standard Model. Volovik calls the latter phenomenon anti- GUT
5. ^ For example, his Emergent physics: on vacuum energy and cosmological constant . (PDF) Lecture, 2005. In 2010, together with Klinkhamer, he published Towards a solution of the cosmological constant problem . In: JETP Letters , Volume 91, 2010, arxiv : 0907.4887