Harald JW Müller-Kirsten

Harald JW Müller-Kirsten

Harald Johann Wilhelm Müller-Kirsten (born May 19, 1935 in Halle (Saale) ) is a German theoretical physicist .

Life

Müller-Kirsten (before 1972: Müller) went into Sydney on the high school and started at the University of Sydney to study. After the family moved to Perth, he continued his studies there at the University of Western Australia . There he received his Bachelor of Science (First Class Honors); Title of his Honors Thesis: Asymptotic Expansions and Converging Factors , Supervisor: Robert Balson Dingle . He then did his doctorate there, also with Robert Balson Dingle; Title of his Ph.D. Thesis: Asymptotic Expansions of Mathieu Functions , Spheroidal Wave Functions , Lamé Functions and Ellipsoidal Wave Functions and Their Characteristic Numbers . Then he was a post-doctoral student at the Institute for Theoretical Physics of Fritz Bopp at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, where he worked with publications on Regge poles and Regge trajectories , etc. a. qualified as a professor . He was a NATO Fellow at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory (Berkeley), a Max Kade Foundation Fellow at the SLAC (Stanford), and an Assistant Professor at the American University of Beirut, and from 1972 was Professor at the University of Kaiserslautern .

Müller-Kirsten wrote over 200 scientific publications in mathematical physics and high-energy physics. He became famous for his book on quantum mechanics and with Armin Wiedemann authored book on supersymmetry ( Supersymmetry ). Müller-Kirsten's book on quantum mechanics contains essential parts of his lifelong research. This began with the supervisor of his dissertation, RB Dingle, with the development of a perturbation calculation method to solve the Mathieu equation, a kind of Schrödinger equation with periodic potential, the basic equation of atomic physics . After this first of a total of four cases, further Schrödinger equations followed, the solutions of which he examined, which were partly mathematically, partly physically motivated, the latter in particular through developments in elementary particle theory : Schrödinger equations with (a) periodic, (b) anharmonic , (c) Coulomb shielding and (d) singular potentials (see e.g. Mathieu function , Lamé function , double-well potential ). After the alternative path integral method developed by the American Richard Feynman became popular, Müller-Kirsten applied it to two of the four cases mentioned in order to compare the results. He achieved this in cooperation with his Chinese colleague Jiu Qing Liang , with the help of periodic pseudoparticles , also called periodic instantons , or elliptic functions . The reference of the Russian colleague DA Garanin to Müller-Kirsten that the period of these functions is proportional to the reciprocal temperature was the beginning of numerous other works by Müller-Kirsten and his colleagues on transitions of special molecules from the quantum mechanical regime to the non-quantum mechanical regime in analogy to changes of state such as that from ice to water. The Müller-Kirstens quantum mechanics book is the first to contain the complete solution of a Schrödinger equation with singular potential. Müller-Kirsten came to this equation in string theory , where it is the oscillation equation of a scalar field in the background of a D3 brane.

Müller-Kirsten is the son of the civil engineer and university professor Wilhelm J. Müller .

Reference books

• with Armin Wiedemann: Supersymmetry. An Introduction with Conceptual and Calculational Details. World Scientific, Singapore et al. 1987, ISBN 9971-5-0354-9 (2nd edition as: Introduction to Supersymmetry (= World Scientific Lecture Notes in Physics. 80). Ibid 2010, ISBN 978-981-4293-41-9 ) .
• Electrodynamics. An Introduction including Quantum Effects. World Scientific, Hackensack NJ et al. 2004, ISBN 981-238-807-9 (2nd edition as Electrodynamics. Ibid 2011, ISBN 978-981-4340-73-1 ).
• Introduction to Quantum Mechanics: Schrödinger Equation and Path Integral. World Scientific, Singapore et al. 2006, ISBN 981-256-692-9 (2nd edition. World Scientific, Hackensack NJ et al. 2012, ISBN 978-981-4397-73-5 ).
• Classical Mechanics and Relativity. World Scientific, Hackensack NJ et al. 2008, ISBN 978-981-283-251-1 .
• Basics of Statistical Physics. A Bachelor Degree Introduction. World Scientific, Hackensack NJ et al. 2010, ISBN 978-981-4287-22-7 (2nd edition as: Basics of Statistical Mechanics. Ibid 2013, ISBN 978-981-4449-53-3 ).

General book

• Riddle truth, retrospectives criss-cross. Haag + Herchen Verlag 2017, ISBN 978-3-89846-783-4 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Harald JW Müller-Kirsten in the catalog of the German National Library
• Publications by Harald JW Müller-Kirsten on ulb.uni-bonn.de
• adsabs.harvard.edu: The SAO / NASA Astrophysics Data System , accessed July 22, 2013.