Alexander Markovich Polyakov
Alexander Markovich Polyakov, Russian Александр Маркович Поляков, scientific transliteration Aleksandr Polyakov Markovič, written in English as Polyakov; ( Born September 27, 1945 in Moscow ) is a Russian physicist.
Life and work
Polyakov studied in Moscow and did research after the Landau Institute in Moscow, where he received his doctorate in 1969. 1969 to 1989 he was professor of physics at the Landau Institute. Since 1989 he is a professor at Princeton University, and from 1999 as Joseph Henry Professor of Physics.
With his friend Alexander Migdal Arkadyevitch he passed in 1961 as a pupil of the entrance exam for the theoretical minimum at Lew Landau himself, who a little later had his serious car accident. With AA Migdal he discovered in 1964 in the Soviet Union regardless the Higgs phenomenon, what they are published also in 1966, but found no echo, as in the then dominant in the Soviet Union Landau School quantum field theory was not taken more seriously.
Polyakov made several important contributions to quantum field theory, among other things, he worked in the field of non- Abelian gauge theory (Yang -Mills theory ), where he 't Hooft - Polyakov monopole solutions introduced (1974, Gerard ' t Hooft worked independently on this area ). With Belawin, Black and Yuri Tjupkin he found 1975 Instantonlösungen in Yang-Mills theories. He also conducts research in the field of Conforming field theory and string theory. In 1984 he published with Alexander and Alexander Belawin Samolodtschikow a fundamental work on conformal field theories and their classification.
The Polyakov action in string theory is named after him. With her Polyakov led in 1981 by a path integral quantization of the string.
He was first to the correspondence of strings in five -dimensional anti - Desitter space ( holographic principle) and 4-dimensional supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories. In the spirit of " holography " is having a field theory on a surface physics in the area enclosed by its volume described ( in a paper by Polyakov " Wall of the Cave " called in allusion to Plato's allegory of the cave ).
Next he deals with turbulence (Application conformal field theory ), with string theory, cosmology and the quark confinement problem in quantum chromodynamics, which he also considered in the string picture treated after he was already one of the first topological explanations in the 1970s this important problem studied, including of the imported by him instantons. In the 1970s, he showed that " instanton liquid " in the three-dimensional ( two space, one time dimension ) compact quantum electrodynamics ( QED) are responsible for the confinement. He also examined the application of the concepts conformal field theory / string theory in statistical mechanics (high-temperature superconductors, etc.), eg in his book, Gauge fields and strings.
1986 he was the Dirac Medal ( ICTP ) and the Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics, 1994 awarded the Lorentz Medal. In 2004 he received, along with Alexander Andreyev, the Pomeranchuk Prize of the Moscow Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics. In 2010 he the Harvey Prize of the Technion Institute in Haifa / Israel was awarded. Since 2005 he is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. In 2011 he was awarded the Lars Onsager - price with Samolodtschikow and Belawin. In 2013 he received the Physics Frontiers Prize and the Fundamental Physics Prize.