Michael Berry (physicist)

Michael Victor Berry ( born March 14, 1941 in Surrey ) is a British mathematical physicist at the University of Bristol.

Berry studied at the University of St Andrews from 1965 and spent his career at the University of Bristol, where he is a professor since 1979. Since 1988 he has been there, Royal Society Research Professor.

Among other things, Berry is known for Geometric phase (often called Berry phase ). This phenomenon has been treated by Berry in 1983 in the framework of quantum mechanics, but there were already various precursors, for example, described and observed S. Pancharatnam the effect in 1956 in the framework of classical optics. It is a dependent of the geometry of the phase space observable by interference experiments phase factor, which occurs when the system parameters relevant to a closed way very slowly (more precisely, adiabatic) be changed. Also, the Aharonov - Bohm effect can be interpreted as a Berry phase.

One of Berry's specialty areas is the semi-classical physics (ie, transitions to the classical physics of quantum mechanics at high quantum numbers ), applied to wave phenomena in quantum mechanics, quantum chaos, and other fields such as optics. In the context of analogies with quantum chaos, he also studied the Riemann zeta function.

In 1990, the Royal Medal of the Royal Society and the Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society was awarded to him. Also in 1990 he was awarded the Dirac Medal ( IOP) and the 1995 Dirac Medal ( ICTP ); He was knighted in 1996. Him the Pólya Prize was awarded in 2005.

His doctoral counts Jonathan Keating.

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