Johann Rafelski

Last updated
Johann Rafelski
201806803-rafelski-johann-220.jpg
Born (1950-05-19) 19 May 1950 (age 73)
Kraków, Poland
NationalityUS, German
Alma mater Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main
Known for Structure of the Vacuum State and Energy in Strong External Field quantum electrodynamics and quantum chromodynamics, Muon-catalyzed fusion, Hadronization and Hagedorn temperature, Deconfinement of quarks (QGP) in relativistic heavy ion collisions, Strangeness as signature of quark–gluon plasma, quark matter
Spouses
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(m. 1973;died 2000)​
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(m. 2003)​
Children Marc Rafelski, Susanne Rafelski
Scientific career
Fields Physicist
Institutions University of Arizona
Doctoral advisor Walter Greiner
Johann Rafelski lecturing at the International Conference on Strangeness in Quark Matter in 2011. SQMSept2011Day4.jpg
Johann Rafelski lecturing at the International Conference on Strangeness in Quark Matter in 2011.

Johann Rafelski (born 19 May 1950) is a German-American theoretical physicist. He is a professor of physics at the University of Arizona in Tucson, [1] guest scientist at CERN (Geneva), [2] and has been LMU-Excellent Guest Professor at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany.

Contents

Rafelski's current research interests center around investigation of the vacuum structure of QCD and QED in the presence of strong fields; study of the QCD vacuum structure and deconfinement with strange particle production [3] in deconfined quark–gluon plasma formed in relativistic heavy ion collisions; the formation of matter out of quark–gluon plasma in the hadronization process, [4] also in the early Universe; [5] considering antimatter formation and annihilation. He has also contributed to the physics of table top muon-catalyzed fusion [6] and the ascent of ultrashort laser light pulses [7] as a new tool in this domain of physics. He contributed to understanding of neural nets and artificial intelligence [8] showing importance of neural plasticity and "sleep".

Career

Rafelski studied physics at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, where he received his PhD in the spring of 1973 working with Walter Greiner on strong fields [9] and muonic atom tests of QED. [10] [11] In 1973 he began a series of postdoctoral fellowships: first at the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia) with Abraham Klein, then at the Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago where he worked with John W. Clark of Washington University in St. Louis and Michael Danos [12] [13] of National Bureau of Standards (now NIST). [14] In the spring of 1977, Rafelski moved for a few months to work at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Germany, then continued on to a fellowship at CERN [15] where he worked with Rolf Hagedorn and John S. Bell; Rafelski remains associated with CERN to this day. [16]

In the fall of 1979 Rafelski was appointed tenured associate professor at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University where he taught for 4 years, while collaborating closely with Hagedorn, Berndt Müller and Gerhard Soff, whom Rafelski mentored in his PhD work. Rafelski then accepted the chair of Theoretical Physics at the University of Cape Town (South Africa) [17] where he created a Theoretical Physics and Astrophysics Institute before moving to The University of Arizona in the fall of 1987. During these years he was also a guest scientist at NIST in Washington, D.C. His interests in muon-catalyzed fusion and other table-top fusion methods led him to a collaboration led by Steven E. Jones [18] working at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. [19] The start-up of experimental work on quark–gluon plasma has led to another enduring collaboration with the University of Paris 7-Jussieu involving Jean Letessier. [20]

Rafelski has remained involved in the study of quark–gluon plasma (QGP) and advancing strangeness production as the pivotal QGP signature, [21] [16] for which the first experimental evidence was announced by CERN in February 2000 [22] and which has now become a new field of physics. [23] [24] [16] This work relates to his long-lasting studies of the structured quantum vacuum, [25] also known as Lorentz Invariant Aether.

Melting Hadrons, Boiling Quarks

Melting Hadrons, Boiling Quarks is a scientific book series edited by Rafelski. [26] The first volume of 2016 published as open-access under the Creative Commons license 4.0. [27] is subtitled 'From Hagedorn Temperature to ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions at CERN', and the volume in preparation was subtitled 'Quark–gluon plasma discovery at CERN'. In the foreword of the first volume, former director-general of CERN, Herwig Schopper, states that the book fulfills two purposes which have been neglected for a long time. [26] Primarily a festschrift (an 'honorary book'), it "...delivers the proper credit to physicist Rolf Hagedorn for his important role at the birth of a new research field"; and it describes how a development which he started just 50 years ago is "...closely connected to the most recent surprises in the new experimental domain of relativistic heavy ion physics...". [26]

Honors, decorations, awards and distinctions

Private life

Rafelski was born in Kraków, Poland, on May 19, 1950. In 1973 Rafelski married Helga Betz, with whom he had two children. Dr. Helga Rafelski died of cancer in 2000. In 2003 Rafelski married the American novelist Victoria Grossack. [31]

Bibliography

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gluon</span> Elementary particle that mediates the strong force

A gluon is a type of elementary particle that mediates the strong interaction between quarks, acting as the exchange particle for the interaction. Gluons are massless vector bosons, thereby having a spin of 1. Through the strong interaction, gluons bind quarks into groups according to quantum chromodynamics (QCD), forming hadrons such as protons and neutrons.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">J/psi meson</span> Subatomic particle made of a charm quark and antiquark

The
J/ψ
 (J/psi) meson is a subatomic particle, a flavor-neutral meson consisting of a charm quark and a charm antiquark. Mesons formed by a bound state of a charm quark and a charm anti-quark are generally known as "charmonium" or psions. The
J/ψ
 is the most common form of charmonium, due to its spin of 1 and its low rest mass. The
J/ψ
 has a rest mass of 3.0969 GeV/c2, just above that of the
η
c, and a mean lifetime of 7.2×10−21 s. This lifetime was about a thousand times longer than expected.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">High-energy nuclear physics</span> Intersection of nuclear physics and high-energy physics

High-energy nuclear physics studies the behavior of nuclear matter in energy regimes typical of high-energy physics. The primary focus of this field is the study of heavy-ion collisions, as compared to lighter atoms in other particle accelerators. At sufficient collision energies, these types of collisions are theorized to produce the quark–gluon plasma. In peripheral nuclear collisions at high energies one expects to obtain information on the electromagnetic production of leptons and mesons that are not accessible in electron–positron colliders due to their much smaller luminosities.

Hadronization is the process of the formation of hadrons out of quarks and gluons. There are two main branches of hadronization: quark-gluon plasma (QGP) transformation and colour string decay into hadrons. The transformation of quark-gluon plasma into hadrons is studied in lattice QCD numerical simulations, which are explored in relativistic heavy-ion experiments. Quark-gluon plasma hadronization occurred shortly after the Big Bang when the quark–gluon plasma cooled down to the Hagedorn temperature when free quarks and gluons cannot exist. In string breaking new hadrons are forming out of quarks, antiquarks and sometimes gluons, spontaneously created from the vacuum.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">STAR detector</span>

The STAR detector is one of the four experiments at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) in Brookhaven National Laboratory, United States.

Quark matter or QCD matter refers to any of a number of hypothetical phases of matter whose degrees of freedom include quarks and gluons, of which the prominent example is quark-gluon plasma. Several series of conferences in 2019, 2020, and 2021 were devoted to this topic.

The Hagedorn temperature,TH, is the temperature in theoretical physics where hadronic matter is no longer stable, and must either "evaporate" or convert into quark matter; as such, it can be thought of as the "boiling point" of hadronic matter. It was discovered by Rolf Hagedorn. The Hagedorn temperature exists because the amount of energy available is high enough that matter particle (quark–antiquark) pairs can be spontaneously pulled from vacuum. Thus, naively considered, a system at Hagedorn temperature can accommodate as much energy as one can put in, because the formed quarks provide new degrees of freedom, and thus the Hagedorn temperature would be an impassable absolute hot. However, if this phase is viewed as quarks instead, it becomes apparent that the matter has transformed into quark matter, which can be further heated.

In physical cosmology, the quark epoch was the period in the evolution of the early universe when the fundamental interactions of gravitation, electromagnetism, the strong interaction and the weak interaction had taken their present forms, but the temperature of the universe was still too high to allow quarks to bind together to form hadrons. The quark epoch began approximately 10−12 seconds after the Big Bang, when the preceding electroweak epoch ended as the electroweak interaction separated into the weak interaction and electromagnetism. During the quark epoch, the universe was filled with a dense, hot quark–gluon plasma, containing quarks, leptons and their antiparticles. Collisions between particles were too energetic to allow quarks to combine into mesons or baryons. The quark epoch ended when the universe was about 10−6 seconds old, when the average energy of particle interactions had fallen below the binding energy of hadrons. The following period, when quarks became confined within hadrons, is known as the hadron epoch.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rolf Hagedorn</span> German theoretical physicist

Rolf Hagedorn was a German theoretical physicist who worked at CERN. He is known for the idea that hadronic matter has a "melting point". The Hagedorn temperature is named in his honor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quark–gluon plasma</span> Phase of quantum chromodynamics (QCD)

Quark–gluon plasma is an interacting localized assembly of quarks and gluons at thermal and chemical (abundance) equilibrium. The word plasma signals that free color charges are allowed. In a 1987 summary, Léon van Hove pointed out the equivalence of the three terms: quark gluon plasma, quark matter and a new state of matter. Since the temperature is above the Hagedorn temperature—and thus above the scale of light u,d-quark mass—the pressure exhibits the relativistic Stefan-Boltzmann format governed by temperature to the fourth power and many practically massless quark and gluon constituents. It can be said that QGP emerges to be the new phase of strongly interacting matter which manifests its physical properties in terms of nearly free dynamics of practically massless gluons and quarks. Both quarks and gluons must be present in conditions near chemical (yield) equilibrium with their colour charge open for a new state of matter to be referred to as QGP.

In high-energy nuclear physics, strangeness production in relativistic heavy-ion collisions is a signature and diagnostic tool of quark–gluon plasma (QGP) formation and properties. Unlike up and down quarks, from which everyday matter is made, heavier quark flavors such as strange and charm typically approach chemical equilibrium in a dynamic evolution process. QGP is an interacting localized assembly of quarks and gluons at thermal (kinetic) and not necessarily chemical (abundance) equilibrium. The word plasma signals that color charged particles are able to move in the volume occupied by the plasma. The abundance of strange quarks is formed in pair-production processes in collisions between constituents of the plasma, creating the chemical abundance equilibrium. The dominant mechanism of production involves gluons only present when matter has become a quark–gluon plasma. When quark–gluon plasma disassembles into hadrons in a breakup process, the high availability of strange antiquarks helps to produce antimatter containing multiple strange quarks, which is otherwise rarely made. Similar considerations are at present made for the heavier charm flavor, which is made at the beginning of the collision process in the first interactions and is only abundant in the high-energy environments of CERN's Large Hadron Collider.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NA49 experiment</span> Particle physics experiment

The NA49 experiment was a particle physics experiment that investigated the properties of quark–gluon plasma. The experiment's synonym was Ions/TPC-Hadrons. It took place in the North Area of the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) at CERN from 1991-2002.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NA35 experiment</span>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Berndt Müller</span>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maurice Jacob</span> French theoretical particle physicist

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Klapisch</span> French physicist (1932–2020)

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emanuele Quercigh</span> Italian particle physicist (born 1934)

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Helga Ernestine Rafelski, was a German particle physicist. She got her professional degree from Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, her master's degree from University of Illinois at Chicago in 1977 and her PhD from University of Cape Town in 1988 under the advisement of Raoul D. Viollier. She studied muon-catalysed fusion and relativistic heavy-ion collisions.

Hannah Elfner is a German physicist who is Head of Simulations at the Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research and Professor of Physics at the Goethe University Frankfurt. She was named the 2021 Alfons and Gertrud Kassel Foundation Scientist of the Year.

Reinhard Stock is a German experimental physicist, specializing in heavy-ion physics.

References

  1. ↑ "Faculty Senate roster". The University of Arizona. Archived from the original on 4 December 2019. Retrieved 10 March 2020.
  2. ↑ "Rafelski's scientific articles published with CERN affiliation". INSPIRE HEP database. 10 March 2020.
  3. ↑ Rafelski, Johann; Müller, Berndt (1986). "Strangeness Production in the Quark–Gluon Plasma". Physical Review Letters. 56 (21): 2334. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.56.2334 . ISSN   0031-9007.
  4. ↑ Koch, P; Müller, B; Rafelski, J (1986). "Strangeness in relativistic heavy ion collisions". Physics Reports. 142 (4): 167–262. Bibcode:1986PhR...142..167K. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.462.8703 . doi:10.1016/0370-1573(86)90096-7. ISSN   0370-1573.
  5. ↑ Fromerth, Michael J.; Rafelski, Johann (2003-04-15). "Hadronization of the Quark Universe". arXiv: astro-ph/0211346 .
  6. ↑ Rafelski, Johann; Jones, Steven E. (1987). "Cold Nuclear Fusion". Scientific American. 257 (1): 84–89. Bibcode:1987SciAm.257a..84R. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0787-84. ISSN   0036-8733. JSTOR   24979424.
  7. ↑ Cowen, Ron (2013). "Two-laser boron fusion lights the way to radiation-free energy". Nature. doi:10.1038/nature.2013.13914. ISSN   0028-0836. S2CID   137981473.
  8. ↑ Clark, John W.; Rafelski, Johann; Winston, Jeffrey V. (1985). "Brain without mind: Computer simulation of neural networks with modifiable neuronal interactions". Physics Reports. 123 (4): 215–273. Bibcode:1985PhR...123..215C. doi:10.1016/0370-1573(85)90038-9. ISSN   0370-1573.
  9. ↑ Rafelski, J.; Müller, B.; Greiner, W. (1974). "The charged vacuum in over-critical fields". Nuclear Physics B. 68 (2): 585–604. Bibcode:1974NuPhB..68..585R. doi:10.1016/0550-3213(74)90333-2.
  10. ↑ Rafelski, Johann (1973). Selbstkonsistente Vielteilchengleichungen fur Elektronen und Muonen und ihre Effekte in Muonischen Atomen (PDF) (PhD). Frankfurt: Frankfurt University.
  11. ↑ Rafelski, Johann; Müller, Berndt; Soff, Gerhard; Greiner, Walter (1974). "Critical discussion of the vacuum polarization measurements in muonic atoms". Annals of Physics. 88 (2): 419–453. Bibcode:1974AnPhy..88..419R. doi:10.1016/0003-4916(74)90177-8.
  12. ↑ "Guide to the Michael Danos Papers 1950-2003". lib.uchicago.edu. Retrieved 2020-03-17. Box 22, folder 8: Rafelski, biographical material and letters of recommendation, 1991
  13. ↑ Michael Danos (2001). Proceedings of the Symposium on Fundamental Issues in Elementary Matter: 25-29 September 2000, Bad Honnef, Germany : in honor and memory of Michael Danos. EP Systema. pp. 416–. ISBN   978-963-00-5764-6.
  14. ↑ O'Brien, Margaret (3 Sep 1999). "Theoretical physicist Michael Danos". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 2020-03-17.
  15. ↑ "The Authors". Scientific American. 241 (6): 19. 1979. Bibcode:1979SciAm.241f..19.. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican1279-19. ISSN   0036-8733.
  16. 1 2 3 Rafelski, Johann (2020). "Discovery of Quark–Gluon Plasma: Strangeness Diaries". The European Physical Journal Special Topics. 229 (1): 1–140. arXiv: 1911.00831 . Bibcode:2020EPJST.229....1R. doi:10.1140/epjst/e2019-900263-x. ISSN   1951-6355. S2CID   207869782.
  17. ↑ Rafelski, Johann (1984). Why and how in theoretical physics : inaugural lecture (PDF). Cape Town: University of Cape Town. ISBN   9780799205886.
  18. ↑ "The Authors". Scientific American. 257 (1): 14–15. 1987. Bibcode:1987SciAm.257a..14.. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0787-14. ISSN   0036-8733.
  19. ↑ Jones, S. E.; Palmer, E. P.; Czirr, J. B.; Decker, D. L.; Jensen, G. L.; Thorne, J. M.; Taylor, S. F.; Rafelski, J. (1989). "Observation of cold nuclear fusion in condensed matter". Nature. 338 (6218): 737–740. Bibcode:1989Natur.338..737J. doi:10.1038/338737a0. ISSN   0028-0836. S2CID   40352698.
  20. ↑ Rafelski, Johann; Letessier, Jean (2004). "Strangeness and quark–gluon plasma". Journal of Physics G: Nuclear and Particle Physics. 30 (1): S1–S28. arXiv: hep-ph/0305284 . Bibcode:2004JPhG...30S...1R. doi:10.1088/0954-3899/30/1/001. ISSN   0954-3899. S2CID   119326264.
  21. ↑ Quercigh, Emanuele; Rafelski, Johann (2000). "A strange quark plasma". Physics World. 13 (10): 37–42. doi:10.1088/2058-7058/13/10/35. ISSN   0953-8585. S2CID   125674588.
  22. ↑ Abbott, Alison (2000). "CERN claims first experimental creation of quark–gluon plasma". Nature. 403 (6770): 581. Bibcode:2000Natur.403..581A. doi: 10.1038/35001196 . ISSN   0028-0836. PMID   10688162.
  23. ↑ Torrieri, G. (2012). "My Strange Times with Johann Rafelski". Acta Physica Polonica B. 43 (4): 821. doi: 10.5506/APhysPolB.43.821 . ISSN   0587-4254. S2CID   119195994.
  24. ↑ "Exploring strangeness and the primordial Universe". ScienceDaily. 31 January 2020. Retrieved 12 March 2020.
  25. ↑ Fulcher, Lewis P.; Rafelski, Johann; Klein, Abraham (1979). "The Decay of the Vacuum". Scientific American. 241 (6): 150–159. Bibcode:1979SciAm.241f.150F. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican1279-150. ISSN   0036-8733. JSTOR   24965361.
  26. 1 2 3 4 Rafelski, Johann, ed. (2016). Melting Hadrons, Boiling Quarks - From Hagedorn Temperature to Ultra-Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions at CERN. Cham: Springer International Publishing. Bibcode:2016mhbq.book.....R. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-17545-4. ISBN   978-3-319-17544-7.
  27. ↑ "eBooks for all!". CERN. Retrieved 2020-07-13.
  28. ↑ "APS fellow archive". American Physical Society. Retrieved 10 March 2020.
  29. ↑ "Academy of Europe: Rafelski Johann". ae-info.org. Retrieved 2021-09-16.
  30. ↑ Freund, Tamás (2022). A 2022. Évi: Rendes, levelező, külső és tiszteleti tagok (PDF) (in Hungarian). Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia. pp. 151 (pdf, no printed pagination).
  31. ↑ "Pufeles families". ics.uci.edu. Retrieved 2021-04-01.
  32. ↑ Rafelski, Johann (2020). Spezielle Relativitätstheorie heute : Schlüssig erklärt mit Beispielen, Aufgaben und Diskussionen. doi:10.1007/978-3-662-59420-9. ISBN   978-3-662-59419-3. S2CID   213477251.
  33. ↑ Rafelski, Johann (2017). Relativity Matters: From Einstein's EMC2 to Laser Particle Acceleration and Quark–Gluon Plasma. Springer. ISBN   978-3-319-51230-3.
  34. ↑ Letessier, Jean; Rafelski, Johann (2002). Hadrons and Quark–Gluon Plasma. Cambridge University Press. ISBN   9780521385367.
  35. ↑ Rafelski, Johann; Müller, Berndt (1996). Die Struktur des Vakuums. Ein Dialog über das 'Nichts'. Deutsch Harri GmbH. ISBN   978-3871448881.
  36. ↑ Greiner, Walter; Rafelski, Johann (1992). Spezielle Relativitätstheorie. H. Deutsch Verlag. ISBN   3-8171-1205-X.
  37. ↑ Greiner, Walter; Müller, Berndt; Rafelski, Johann (1985). Quantum Electrodynamics of Strong Fields. Springer-Verlag. ISBN   978-3-642-82272-8.
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