Alan Harold Luther

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Alan Harold Luther (born December 14, 1940) is an American physicist, specializing in condensed matter physics.

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Education and career

Luther graduated in electrical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a B.S. in 1962 and an M.S. in 1963. In 1967 he graduated from the University of Maryland with a Ph.D. in physics [1] under the supervision of Richard Allan Ferrell. [2] As a postdoc Luther was from 1967 to 1969 at the Technical University of Munich and from 1969 to 1971 at Brookhaven National Laboratory. At Harvard University he was from 1971 to 1973 an assistant professor and from 1973 to 1976 an associate professor. At Nordita in Copenhagen he was from 1976 a full professor from 1976 [1] until his retirement as professor emeritus. [3]

In 1974 he found, with Victor Emery, exact solutions for one-dimensional electron gas models (Luther-Emery liquids). [4] Luther's research also deals with boson-fermion duality, conformal field theories, the generalized Bethe ansatz, spin chains and two-dimensional models of statistical mechanics, strongly correlated electron systems in two dimensions, and high-temperature superconductivity. [1]

For the academic year 1975–1976 he was a Sloan Research Fellow. [5] In 2001 he received (with Victor Emery) the Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize for "fundamental contribution to the theory of interacting electrons in one dimension." [1]

Selected publications

Books

Related Research Articles

Fermi liquid theory

Fermi liquid theory is a theoretical model of interacting fermions that describes the normal state of most metals at sufficiently low temperatures. The interactions among the particles of the many-body system do not need to be small. The phenomenological theory of Fermi liquids was introduced by the Soviet physicist Lev Davidovich Landau in 1956, and later developed by Alexei Abrikosov and Isaak Khalatnikov using diagrammatic perturbation theory. The theory explains why some of the properties of an interacting fermion system are very similar to those of the ideal Fermi gas, and why other properties differ.

In physics, the Schwinger model, named after Julian Schwinger, is the model describing 1+1D Lorentzian quantum electrodynamics which includes electrons, coupled to photons.

The fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE) is a physical phenomenon in which the Hall conductance of 2D electrons shows precisely quantised plateaus at fractional values of . It is a property of a collective state in which electrons bind magnetic flux lines to make new quasiparticles, and excitations have a fractional elementary charge and possibly also fractional statistics. The 1998 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Robert Laughlin, Horst Störmer, and Daniel Tsui "for their discovery of a new form of quantum fluid with fractionally charged excitations" Laughlin's explanation only applies to fillings where is an odd integer. The microscopic origin of the FQHE is a major research topic in condensed matter physics.

In theoretical condensed matter physics and particle physics, bosonization is a mathematical procedure by which a system of interacting fermions in (1+1) dimensions can be transformed to a system of massless, non-interacting bosons. The method of bosonization was conceived independently by particle physicists Sidney Coleman and Stanley Mandelstam; and condensed matter physicists Daniel C. Mattis and Alan Luther in 1975.

Topological order Type of order at absolute zero

In physics, topological order is a kind of order in the zero-temperature phase of matter. Macroscopically, topological order is defined and described by robust ground state degeneracy and quantized non-Abelian geometric phases of degenerate ground states. Microscopically, topological orders correspond to patterns of long-range quantum entanglement. States with different topological orders cannot change into each other without a phase transition.

A charge density wave (CDW) is an ordered quantum fluid of electrons in a linear chain compound or layered crystal. The electrons within a CDW form a standing wave pattern and sometimes collectively carry an electric current. The electrons in such a CDW, like those in a superconductor, can flow through a linear chain compound en masse, in a highly correlated fashion. Unlike a superconductor, however, the electric CDW current often flows in a jerky fashion, much like water dripping from a faucet due to its electrostatic properties. In a CDW, the combined effects of pinning and electrostatic interactions likely play critical roles in the CDW current's jerky behavior, as discussed in sections 4 & 5 below.

String-net liquid Condensed matter physics model involving only closed loops

In condensed matter physics, a string-net is an extended object whose collective behavior has been proposed as a physical mechanism for topological order by Michael A. Levin and Xiao-Gang Wen. A particular string-net model may involve only closed loops; or networks of oriented, labeled strings obeying branching rules given by some gauge group; or still more general networks.

The quantum spin Hall state is a state of matter proposed to exist in special, two-dimensional semiconductors that have a quantized spin-Hall conductance and a vanishing charge-Hall conductance. The quantum spin Hall state of matter is the cousin of the integer quantum Hall state, and that does not require the application of a large magnetic field. The quantum spin Hall state does not break charge conservation symmetry and spin- conservation symmetry.

A composite fermion is the topological bound state of an electron and an even number of quantized vortices, sometimes visually pictured as the bound state of an electron and, attached, an even number of magnetic flux quanta. Composite fermions were originally envisioned in the context of the fractional quantum Hall effect, but subsequently took on a life of their own, exhibiting many other consequences and phenomena.

Piers Coleman British-American physicist

Piers Coleman is a British-born theoretical physicist, working in the field of theoretical condensed matter physics. Coleman is Professor of Physics at Rutgers University in New Jersey and at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Heavy fermion superconductors are a type of unconventional superconductor.

The Fulde–Ferrell–Larkin–Ovchinnikov (FFLO) phase can arise in a superconductor in large magnetic field. Among its characteristics are Cooper pairs with nonzero total momentum and a spatially non-uniform order parameter, leading to normal conducting areas in the superconductor.

Alexander V. Balatsky

Alexander V. Balatsky is a USSR-born American physicist. He is the professor of theoretical physics at NORDITA and University of Connecticut. He served as the founding director of the Institute for Materials Science (IMS) at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 2014-2017.

Ramamurti Rajaraman is an Emeritus Professor of Theoretical Physics at the School of Physical Sciences at Jawaharlal Nehru University. He was also the co-Chairman of the International Panel on Fissile Materials and a member of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' Science and Security Board. He has taught and conducted research in physics at the Indian Institute of Science, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and as a visiting professor at Stanford, Harvard, MIT, and elsewhere. He received his doctorate in theoretical physics in 1963 from Cornell University. In addition to his physics publications, Rajaraman has written widely on topics including fissile material production in India and Pakistan and the radiological effects of nuclear weapon accidents.

Alberto Sirlin was an Argentine theoretical physicist, specializing in particle physics.

Kenneth Alan Johnson was an American theoretical physicist. He was Professor of Physics at MIT, a leader in the study of quantum field theories and the quark substructure of matter. Johnson contributed to the understanding of symmetry and anomalies in quantum field theories and to models of quark confinement and dynamics in quantum chromodynamics.

Frank F. Fang is a Chinese-American solid-state physicist. He was part of the team that succeeded in 1966 in the detection of a two-dimensional electron gas and its quantum properties in semiconductors.

Tin-Lun "Jason" Ho is a Chinese-American theoretical physicist, specializing in condensed matter theory, quantum gases, and Bose-Einstein condensates. He is known for the Mermin-Ho relation.

Aron Pinczuk was an Argentine-American experimental condensed matter physicist who was professor of physics and professor of applied physics at Columbia University. He was known for his work on correlated electronic states in two dimensional systems using photoluminescence and resonant inelastic light scattering methods. He was a fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "2001 Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Physics Prize Recipient, Alan Harold Luther". American Physical Society.
  2. "Richard Allan Ferrell". Physics Tree.
  3. "People at NORDITA, Alan Luther". NORDITA (Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics).
  4. Xianlong, G.; Rizzi, M.; Polini, M.; Fazio, R.; Tosi, M. P.; Campo Jr, V. L.; Capelle, K. (2007). "Luther-Emery phase and atomic-density waves in a trapped fermion gas". Physical Review Letters. 98 (3): 030404. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.98.030404. arXiv preprint
  5. "Sloan Research Fellows, Fellows Database". Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. (Search on "Luther".)