Victor Popov

Viktor Nikolayevich Popov (Russian: Виктор Николаевич Попов, Victor Nikolaevich Popov English transcription; born October 27, 1937 † April 1994), was a Russian theoretical physicist.

Popov studied theoretical physics at the Leningrad State University ( LGU ) and worked from 1959 in the group of J. Nowoschilow at the Leningrad branch of the Steklov Institute ( Lomi ). After the dissolution of the group, he went back to Leningrad University where he received his habilitation and assistant professor of mathematical physics was. Here they started cooperation with his colleague Ludwig Faddejew, first on applications of graph techniques of quantum field theory in solid state physics. In 1965 he went to Lomi, where he remained for the rest of his career and with Faddejew formed the group of mathematical physics again.

He is known for his work on the quantization of gauge field theories, in particular the introduction of Faddejew - Popov ghosts with Ludwig Faddejew The need for the introduction of such unphysical degrees of freedom in the quantization of gauge field theories realized previously Richard Feynman in the early 1960s. As Feynman investigated Faddejew and Popov, Yang-Mills fields initially as models of the quantization of gravity. Behind the Faddejew - Popov construction puts the differential-geometric interpretation of gauge fields by means of fiber bundles, the Faddejew then knew from the textbooks by André Lichnerowicz.