Pierre Sikivie

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pierre Sikivie, 2019

Pierre Sikivie (born October 29, 1949 in Sint-Truiden ) is a Belgian theoretical physicist (elementary particle physics, astroparticle physics).

Life

Sikivie studied physics at the University of Liège with a licentiate in 1970 and at Yale University , where he received his master's degree in 1972 and received his doctorate in 1975 under Feza Gürsey (Lepton and Hadron spectra in universal gauge theories). As a post-doctoral student , he was at the University of Maryland , SLAC (1977 to 1979) and CERN (Senior Fellow 1979 to 1981). From 1981 he was an Assistant Professor at the University of Florida with a full professorship since 1988 and the title Distinguished Professor since 2012.

In 1980 he married Cynthia Chennault (who is also at the University of Florida), with whom he has two sons.

plant

He is responsible for research on the axion , its detectability (axion helioscope, for example CAST experiment , axion haloscope, Sikivie detector, for example in the ADMX experiment ), differentiation from other dark matter candidates and cosmological effects (distribution in galactic halos , Production in the Early Universe). His suggestions for the search for the Axion have been implemented by various experimental groups. Sikivie showed for the first time in the 1980s that axions, which were proposed as a way out of the strong CP problem and which at that time were imagined as undetectable ( invisible ), form domain walls and thus have strong undesirable cosmological effects if certain conditions are not met are. The work established the axion cosmology . In 1983 he and L. Abbott showed that axions with masses in the micro-electron volt range were produced on a large scale during the QCD phase transition in the early universe, so that they are good candidates for dark matter.

In the axion haloscope he proposed in 1983, axions made of dark matter are converted into microwave photons in a cavity with a strong magnetic field; in the axion helioscope, axions from the sun are converted into x-rays in a magnetic field on earth in the laboratory. Both use the Sikivie process of converting axions into photons and have been implemented on various occasions in large laboratories. In Shining light through walls experiments, the Sikivie process and its reversal (conversion of photons to axions) is applied on two sides of a wall, first photons in axions that run through a wall and on the other side axions into photons (e.g. CERN, DESY ).

Sikivie also showed that the gravitational incidence of dark matter in galactic halos creates caustics (ring structures) similar to optics, with inner and outer caustics forming, the inner ones with a structure similar to the elliptic umbilic catastrophe. The prerequisite is a non-vanishing total rotation. There were indications of such caustics. Sikivie and Q. Yang 2009 (Rethermalization when dark matter falls in the form of axions through gravitational self-interaction and the formation of a Bose-Einstein condensate) clarified the riddle of why a total rotation actually does not occur with cold, dark matter.

Other fields were in the 1980s GUTs (proposal of a GUTs based on the exceptional Lie group E6 with Gürsey and Pierre Ramond ), CP violation , classic through the weak interaction Yang-Mills theories and dynamic symmetry breaking ( Technicolor ) and later Casimir -like Forces, properties of axion strings and domain walls in cosmology, and formation of galactic halos.

Honors and memberships

In 1994 he became a Fellow of the American Physical Society . In 1998 he was a Guggenheim Fellow and in 2005 with an IBM Einstein Endowed Fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study . In 1996 he received the Jesse W. Beams Award .

For 2020 he received the Sakurai Prize for fundamental work on the potential verifiability of the "invisible" axion via new methods for its discovery and for theoretical work on its cosmological significance (laudation).

Fonts

In addition to the works cited in the individual references:

  • Axions, in Gianfranco Bertone (Ed.), Particle dark matter, Cambridge UP 2009, pp. 204-227

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biographical Data, American Men and Women of Science , Thomson Gale 2004
  2. ↑ Sikivie, experimental tests of the 'invisible' axion, Phys. Rev. Lett., Vol. 51, 1983, pp. 1415-1417
  3. ↑ Summary for example Sikivie: Axion cosmology, Arxiv 2006
  4. ↑ At the same time the prediction came from Frank Wilczek , John Preskill , Mark Wise , Michael Dine , Willy Fischler
  5. ↑ Abbott, Sikivie, A cosmological bound on the invisible axion , Phys. Lett. B, Vol. 120, 1983, pp. 133-136
  6. ↑ Ipser, Sikivie, Are galactic halos mad of axions?, Phys. Rev. Lett., Vol. 50, 1983, pp. 925-927
  7. ↑ Sikivie, Evidence for ring caustics in the milky way, Phys. Lett. B, Vol. 567, 2003, pp. 1-8
  8. ↑ Sikivie, Yang, Bose-Einstein condensation of dark matter axions, Phys. Rev. Lett., Volume 103, 2009, p. 111301
  9. ↑ Gürsey, Ramond, Sikivie, A universal gauge theory model based on E6, Phys. Lett. B, Vol. 60, 1976, pp. 177-180
  10. ↑ Sakurai Prize for Sikivie , For seminal work recognizing the potential visibility of the invisible axion, devising novel methods to detect it, and for theoretical investigations of its cosmological implications.
personal data
SURNAME Sikivie, Pierre
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Belgian physicist
DATE OF BIRTH October 29, 1949
PLACE OF BIRTH Sint-Truiden