Ian Affleck

Ian Affleck ( born July 2, 1952 in Vancouver ) is a Canadian theoretical physicist.

Life and work

Affleck studied at Trent University in Peterborough ( Ontario) ( bachelor's degree 1975) and Harvard University, where in 1976 he took his master's degree and was awarded his doctorate in 1979 with Sidney Coleman. 1979 to 1981 he was a Junior Fellow at Harvard. 1981 to 1987 he was Assistant Professor at Princeton University, interrupted by a stay at the nuclear research center in Saclay in 1984/85. He is at the University of British Columbia since 1987 professor.

Affleck began in the early 1980s with work in elementary particle physics and quantum field theory, for example, he examined the role of instantons in various quantum field theories. With Michael Dine and others, he wrote early work on dynamic fracture of supersymmetry and developed the Affleck - Dine mechanism for baryogenesis. Later he turned to solid state physics, where he applied quantum field theoretical methods of elementary particle physics, such as conformal field theories, the concept of local gauge invariance or non-Abelian bosonization. In solid-state physics, he worked on high-temperature superconductors, low-dimensional magnetic systems (such as quasi- one-dimensional antiferromagnets ) and magnetic impurities in metals ( Kondo model) and associated with boundary conditions of critical phenomena.

1983 to 1987 he was a Sloan Fellow. In 1988 he received the Steacie Prize, 1990, Hertzberg Medal, 1991, the Rutherford Medal, the 1992 Killam Prize and the Jacob Biely Prize, and the 2012 Lars Onsager - price. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and in 2010 a Fellow of the Royal Society.

In the eulogy for election to the Royal Society his many pioneering contributions over a wide range of theoretical physics are emphasized.

Writings

• Field Theory Methods and Quantum Critical Phenomena. In: Tin Justin Brezin (Editor): Fields, Strings and Critical Phenomena. Les Houches Lectures, North Holland, 1990, pp. 563-640.