Yuri Abramovich Golfand

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Yuri Golfand

Juri Abramowitsch Golfand ( Russian Юрий Абрамович Го́льфанд ; born  January 10, 1922 in Charkow ; † February 17, 1994 in Jerusalem ; English spelling Yuri Golfand ) was a Russian theoretical physicist, one of the discoverers of supersymmetry .

Golfand studied mathematics and physics at the University of Charkow (Ukrainian: Charkiw), interrupted from military service in World War II (as an aircraft mechanic). After the war, he continued his studies (mathematics) in Leningrad , where he took his degree in 1946 and a year later received his doctorate . He then worked at a research institute for electrical engineering before joining Igor Tamm's theory group at the Lebedev Institute (FIAN) in Moscow in 1951 . He worked in quantum field theory , where he a. a. 1959 wrote a paper on renormalization theory under the assumption that the four-dimensional momentum space has a constant curvature (different from zero) . In 1970 he and his student Yevgeny Pinchassowitsch Lichtman ( Russian Евгений Пинхасович Лихтман , English transcription Evgeni Likhtman) developed an extension of Poincare algebra with the help of spinors , which is the first example of a four-dimensional variant of a supersymmetric expanded theory of the supersymmetric theory (in this case, supersymmetry ) delivered. Golfand discussed this possibility with colleagues as early as the late 1960s as a way of circumventing the Coleman-Mandula theorem , but when he wanted to present it at the 15th International High Energy Physics Congress in Kiev, this was rejected. The publication of the detailed theory with his student Lichtman initially only appeared in a much abridged form in the JETP Letters (more detailed was a report by FIAN by Lichtman from 1971 and a publication by Golfand with Lichtman in the Tamm commemorative publication in 1972).

A little later than Golfand and Lichtman, D. Volkov and VP Akulov also introduced four-dimensional supersymmetry in Kharkov. Russian work received little attention at the time, and the real rise in supersymmetry did not begin until 1974 with the work of Julius Wess and Bruno Zumino in the West. Today, the theory, which was also introduced by the pioneers of string theory (as part of a world sheet supersymmetry, i.e. initially in two dimensions) André Neveu , John Schwarz and Pierre Ramond around 1971, is considered to be an important building block in a presumed comprehensive theory of elementary particles and their interactions ( GUTs ), for example within string theory (superstrings), which as a candidate for GUTs requires supersymmetry.

Shortly after this pioneering work, he was dismissed from FIAN in 1973. After he had applied to leave Israel, he found no other position as a scientist in the Soviet Union. In 1980 he was put under pressure from foreign physicists, e. B. from the APS , employed again at FIAN (but not in the theory department). Only with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990 was he able to travel to Israel with his family . He spent his last years in Haifa on a research assignment from the Technion . He died of a stroke.

In 1989 he received the Tamm Prize of the Soviet Academy of Sciences .

Web links

  • Michail Schifman : Introduction to the Yuri Golfand Memorial Volume "Many Faces of Superworld", World Scientific 2000, at arxiv : hep-th / 9909016
  • Michail Schifman: Introduction to Collection "Physics in a Mad World" (an Abridged Version) at arxiv : 1508.03578

Notes and references

  1. ↑ The condition can be interpreted as introducing a fundamental length into the theory
  2. ↑ the algebra of the generators of the Lorentz transformations, rotations in space and translations in space-time
  3. ^ Golfand and Likhtman: Extension of the Algebra of Poincaré Group Operators and Violation of P-Invariance . In: JETP Letters . Volume 13, 1971, pp. 323-326; On the extension of the Generators of the Poincaré Group by the Bispinor Generators . In: V. Ginzburg (editor): Problems of Theoretical Physics - Tamm Memorial Volume . Nauka, Moscow 1972, reprinted in: Michail Shifman (editor): The Many Faces of the Superworld- Golfand Memorial Volume . World Scientific 2000
  4. ↑ Volkov and Akulov: Possible universal neutrino interaction . In: JETP Letters . Volume 16, 1972, pp. 438-440; Is the Neutrino a Goldstone Particle? . In: Physics Letters B . Volume 46, 1973, pp. 109-110
  5. ^ Wess and Zumino: Supergauge Transformation in four dimensions . In: Nuclear Physics B . Volume 70, 1974, pp. 39-54
  6. ^ Neveu and Schwarz: Factorizable dual model for pions . In: Nuclear Physics B . Volume 31, 1971, pp. 86-112; Neveu, Schwarz and Thorn: Reformulation of the Dual Pion Model . In: Physics Letters B . Volume 35, 1971, pp. 529-522; Ramond: Dual theory for free fermions . In: Physical Review D . Volume 3, 1971, pp. 2415-2418
  7. ↑ Allegedly due to a routine deletion of "superfluous" sections
personal data
SURNAME Golfand, Yuri Abramovich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Golfand, Yuri (English spelling); Гольфанд, Юрий Абрамович (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian physicist
DATE OF BIRTH January 10, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Kharkov , Kharkov Governorate , Soviet Union
DATE OF DEATH February 17, 1994
Place of death Jerusalem , Israel