Helmut Rauch

Helmut Rauch (born 22 January 1939 in Krems an der Donau, Lower Austria ) is an Austrian nuclear physicist and long-time head of the Atomic Institute of the Austrian Universities. He is best known for ( neutron ) experiments on the foundations of quantum mechanics.

Life

Rauch studied Technical Physics at the Technical University of Vienna, where he in 1965 received his doctorate at the Atomic Institute of the Austrian Universities in 1970 and his habilitation ( in the field of neutron and reactor physics ). He became professor of experimental nuclear physics at the Technical University of Vienna in 1972. He was from 1972 to 1979 director of the Institute for Experimental Nuclear Physics and 1980-1996 in exchange with Gernot Eder of the Institute of Nuclear Physics. 1979/80 he spent a year at the Nuclear Research Centre Jülich and 1983 at the Institut Laue -Langevin in Grenoble.

1985 to 1990 he was Vice President and 1991-1994 President of the FWF. 1992 to 2003 he was in the Scientific Council of the European spallation sources, from 1996 to 1999 the Council of the European Science Foundation and since 1999 in which the European Neutron Association. 1972 to 2005 he was Head of the Atomic Institute of the Austrian Universities.

Among his students Anton Zeilinger, Harald Weinfurter, Kurt Binder, Heinrich Kurz, Jörg Schmiedmayer.

Work

Smoke proved in 1974 together with Ulrich Bonse and Wolfgang Treimer by interference experiments with a neutron interferometer, which he himself had developed that monochromatic neutrons have wave character and that matter waves exist in a macroscopic scale. This was another proof that even massive particles, not just photons can be both matter wave. He also showed experimentally the symmetry of spinors ( spin 1/2 particles ) with two full revolutions ( during a full revolution, however, they change the sign ) and the superposition of the spin.

In 1983, he was also able to prove that a quantum mechanical measurement, the phase relationship of matter waves do not interfere, nor destroyed by experiments on the exchange of energy between neutrons and magnetic fields in Grenoble.

Awards (excerpt)

He is a member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences ( corresponding member since 1979, full member since 1990), the Leopoldina and of the Academia Europaea.

Writings

• Publisher with Bonse Neutron Interferometry, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1979
• Editor with G. Badurek, Anton Zeilinger Matter Wave Interferometry, North Holland 1988
• With SA Werner Neutron Interferometry, Clarendon Press 2000
• Neutroninterferometrie key to quantum mechanics, physics in our time 1998
• High -resolution neutron spectroscopy and quantum mechanical uncertainty principle, physical sheets 1988, p 172