Roberto Peccei

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Roberto Daniele Peccei (born January 6, 1942 in Turin ; † June 1, 2020 ) was an Italian theoretical physicist . He dealt with elementary particle physics and its connection to astrophysical and cosmological questions ( astro-particle physics ), for example the hypothesis of baryogenesis about the previous generation of leptons ( leptogenesis ).

Peccei became known together with Helen Quinn in the 1970s for his proposal (the Peccei-Quinn theory) to solve the Strong CP problem of the strong interaction ( quantum chromodynamics , QCD).

Life

Peccei was the son of Aurelio Peccei , co-founder and first president of the Club of Rome and manager at Fiat and Olivetti, co-founder of Alitalia. Peccei grew up in Argentina, where his father ran the Fiat business from 1949, and moved to the USA from 1958 , where he obtained his bachelor's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1962 and his master’s degree from New in 1964 York University and a PhD from MIT in 1969. He was then a postdoc at the University of Washington and, from 1971, at Stanford University . From 1978 he worked at the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Munich and from 1984 head of the theory group at DESY in Hamburg . In 1987 he became a Fellow of the American Physical Society . From 1989 he was professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he was head of the physics faculty, from 1993 Dean of the Division of Physical Sciences of the College of Letters and Sciences and since 2000 Vice Chancellor for Research. He also chaired the advisory committee for the Laboratory of Nuclear Science at Cornell University and MIT.

Like his father, Peccei was a member of the Club of Rome and president of the Fondazione Aurelio Peccei. For 2013 he was awarded the Sakurai Prize . In 2016 he was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Peccei-Quinn theory

A certain CP-violating term of QCD, which is theoretically possible due to its complicated vacuum structure and was predicted by Gerardus' t Hooft , is not observed in nature . This was a theoretical obstacle to the adoption of QCD as a strong interaction theory in the 1970s.

Peccei and Quinn proposed a solution to this problem through a global chiral U (1) - symmetry before (Peccei-Quinn symmetry). The theory also implies the existence of axions (since the symmetry is broken spontaneously , the axions are the gold-clay bosons that appear ); you are one of the candidates for dark matter .

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ In memoriam: Roberto Peccei, 78, internationally renowned particle physicist UCLA, accessed June 12, 2020
  2. ↑ Roberto Peccei - In Memoriam clubofrome.org, accessed June 2, 2020
  3. ^ Peccei, Quinn CP conservation in the presence of pseudoparticles , Physical Review Letters, Vol. 38, 1977, p. 1440, Constraints Imposed by CP Conservation in the Presence of a Pseudoparticle , Physical Review D, Vol. 16, 1977, p. 1791-1797
  4. ^ American Academy of Arts and Sciences : Newly Elected Fellows. In: amacad.org. Retrieved April 22, 2016 .
  5. ↑ chiral refers to transformation behavior for right and left-handed quarks and leptons
personal data
SURNAME Peccei, Roberto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Peccei, Roberto Daniele (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian theoretical physicist
DATE OF BIRTH January 6, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Turin
DATE OF DEATH June 1, 2020