Oriol Bohigas (physicist)

Oriol Bohigas i Martí (born December 22, 1937 in Barcelona , † October 22, 2013 in Orsay ) was a French-Spanish (Catalan) mathematical physicist who was a pioneer of quantum chaos .

Bohigas studied physics in Barcelona and Orsay (where he never did a doctorate) and was from 1966 Attaché de Recherche for the CNRS at the Institute for Nuclear Physics in Orsay. In 1971 he was appointed Chargé de Recherche of the CNRS, Maitre de Recherche in 1979 and Research Director of the CNRS in 1989. He headed the theoretical physics department at the Institute for Nuclear Physics and founded the Laboratoire de Physique Théorique et Modèles Statistiques (LPTMS) in Toulouse in 1991 and was its director. In 2004 he retired, but remained scientifically active.

He is known for contributions to the application of the theory of random matrices to the statistics of spectra of quantum mechanical systems. The presumed connection between the two is called the presumption of Bohigas-Giannoni-Schmit. It has been confirmed experimentally with, among other things, microwave billiard experiments ( Hans-Jürgen Stöckmann ).

He also dealt with nuclear physics, in addition to quantum chaos in nuclear physics, a hydrodynamic theory of giant resonances and sum rules for collective nuclear excitations.

He was an honorary doctorate from TU Darmstadt (2001), received the Gay Lussac Humboldt Prize in 1991 and the Holweck Medal in 1999 .

Bohigas was married to Nuria Sales. The couple had a son and two daughters. In 1981 he became a French citizen.

Fonts

• with J. Flores: Spacing and individual eigenvalue distributions of two-body random hamiltonians. In: Physics Letters B. 35, No. 5, 1971, pp. 383-386, doi : 10.1016 / 0370-2693 (71) 90399-6 .
• with AM Lane , J. Martorell: Sum rules for nuclear collective excitations. In: Physics Reports. 51, No. 5, 1979, pp. 267-316, doi : 10.1016 / 0370-1573 (79) 90079-6 .
• with H. Krivine, J. Treiner: Derivation of a fluid-dynamical lagrangian and electric giant resonances. In: Nuclear Physics A. 336, No. 2, 1980, pp. 155-184, doi : 10.1016 / 0375-9474 (80) 90618-1 .
• with M.-J. Giannoni, C. Schmit: Characterization of Chaotic Quantum Spectra and Universality of Level Fluctuation Laws. In: Physical Review Letters. 52, No. 1, 1984, pp. 1-4, doi : 10.1103 / PhysRevLett.52.1 .
• with Hans-Arwed Weidenmüller : Aspects of Chaos in Nuclear Physics. In: Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science. 38, No. 1, 1988, pp. 421-453, doi : 10.1146 / annurev.ns.38.120188.002225 .
• Random matrix theories and chaotic dynamics. In: M.-J. Giannoni, A. Voros, J. Zinn-Justin: Chaos and Quantum Physics. Les Houches, Session LII, 1989, Elsevier, 1991.
• with S. Tomsovic, D. Ullmo: Manifestations of classical phase space structures in quantum mechanics. In: Physics Reports. 223, No. 2, 1993, pp. 43-133, doi : 10.1016 / 0370-1573 (93) 90109-Q .
• with Eugene Bogomolny , P. Leboeuf: Quantum chaotic dynamics and random polynomials. In: Journal of Statistical Physics. 85, No. 5-6, 1996, pp. 639-679, doi : 10.1007 / BF02199359 .

Web links

• Biography at Scholarpedia