Joël Scherk

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Joël Scherk (* 1946 ; † 1980 ) was a French theoretical physicist who mainly worked on string theory and supergravity . He realized with John Schwarz around 1974 that string theory, which had previously been considered a candidate for a strong interaction theory, is instead a candidate for a Grand Unified Theory (GUT) of all known interactions, including gravity.

Scherk studied in Paris at the École normal supérieure (ENS). In 1969 he made his diploma (Thèse de Troisieme Cycle) at the University of Paris XI in Orsay with Philippe Meyer and Claude Bouchiat and received his doctorate there in 1971. In 1969, he was now with the CNRS , with John Schwarz and David Gross at Princeton University , where he and his French fellow student André Neveu investigated divergences in single-loop diagrams of the boson string theory (they discovered the cause in tachyon divergences). In 1971 he was back at the ENS, where he and Neveu showed that the spin-1 stimuli of Strings could describe Yang Mills theories . He was also at Berkeley , CERN and Cambridge during this time . In 1974 he was visiting scholar at New York University and at Caltech with Murray Gell-Mann and Schwarz. Schwarz and Scherk were some of the few physicists who were still working on the string model at the time, although it had already been shown in 1970 that it was only consistent for higher dimensions (26 in the case of the bosonic string). They showed that the spin-2 excitations of closed strings could describe gravitation, which, thanks to the good high-energy behavior of string theories, gave rise to the possibility of a finite, renormalizable theory of quantum gravity.

Scherk, Schwarz and Lars Brink constructed the first supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories in 1977 and showed that these were u. a. existed in 10 dimensions. With F. Gliozzi and David Olive , Scherk then showed that the spectrum of supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories in 10 dimensions resulted from the corresponding (RNS, Ramond-Neveu-Schwarz) fermion string theory if certain additional conditions were met (GSO projection , for Gliozzi-Scherk-Olive). This was an indication that in addition to the world sheet supersymmetry discussed earlier, there was also space-time supersymmetry in string theories. In 1978 he constructed the Lagrangian supergravity in eleven dimensions with Eugène Cremmer and Bernard Julia .

Scherk established himself as one of the leading string theorists in the 1970s. Most recently he was at the ENS in Paris. He died surprisingly, according to some sources, as a result of a diabetic coma after forgetting his insulin injection. According to other sources, he committed suicide. He previously had a nervous breakdown and was therefore being treated.

Fonts

  • An introduction to the theory of dual models and strings . In: Reviews of Modern Physics . Volume 47, 1975, p. 123

Web links

References and Notes

  1. ^ After John Schwarz he died in 1980, Schwarz The Scientific Contributions of Joel Scherk . Sometimes 1979 is also given, for example in Leonid Mlodinow Euclids Window .
  2. ^ Gross, Neveu, Scherk and Schwarz: Renormalization and Unitarity in the Dual Resonance Model . In: Physical Review D . Volume 2, 1970, p. 692
  3. ^ Neveu and Scherk: Connections between Yang-Mills Theories and Dual Models . In: Nuclear Physics B . Volume 36, 1972, p. 155, Scherk: Zero Slope Limit of the Dual Resonance Model . In: Nuclear Physics B . Volume 31, 1971, p. 222
  4. ↑ In the early to mid-1970s, the standard model including quantum chromodynamics prevailed as the theory of elementary particles and their interactions, which initiated a renaissance of "ordinary" quantum field theories.
  5. ↑ through the work of Claude Lovelace a. a.
  6. ↑ Scherk and Schwarz: Dual Model for Non Hadrons . In: Nuclear Physics B . Volume 81, 1974, p. 118; Dual models and the geometry of spacetime . In: Physics Letters B . Volume 52, 1974, p. 347. Proposed independently by Yoneya in Japan around the same time.
  7. ↑ Scherk and Schwarz: Dual Model Approach to a renormizable theory of gravitation . Essay submitted in 1975 for the Gravity Research Foundation competition, reprinted in black: Superstrings . Volume 1, World Scientific, 1985
  8. ↑ Brink, Scherk and Schwarz: Supersymmetric Yang-Mills Theories . In: Nuclear Physics B . Volume 121, 1977, p. 77
  9. ^ Gliozzi, Scherk and Olive: Supergravity and the Spinor Dual Model . In: Physics Letters B . Vol. 65, 1976, p. 282; Supersymmetry, Supergravity and the Dual Spinor Model . In: Nuclear Physics B . Volume 122, 1977, p. 253
  10. ^ Supergravity Theory in Eleven Dimensions . In: Physics Letters B . Volume 76, 1978, pp. 409-412
  11. ^ Peter van Nieuwenhuizen and Daniel Freedman (editors): Supergravity. Proceedings of a Workshop at Stony Brook, September 27-29, 1979 . North Holland 1979, the Proceedings appeared after his death and were dedicated to him.
  12. ↑ Leonard Mlodinow : Euclid's Window . The Free Press, 2001 - German: The window to the universe . Campus Verlag 2002
  13. ↑ Among other things, he wrote strange telegrams to physicists like Richard Feynman and wandered the streets of Paris. His wife and two children had left him for England.
personal data
SURNAME Scherk, Joël
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French physicist
DATE OF BIRTH 1946
DATE OF DEATH 1980