Nikolay Prokof'ev

Last updated
Nikolay Prokof'ev
Born
Alma mater Moscow Engineering Physics Institute
AwardsFellow of the American Physical Society
Scientific career
Fields Physics, Condensed Matter Theory
Institutions University of Massachusetts Amherst
Academic advisors Yuri Kagan

Nikolay Victorovich Prokof'ev is a Russian-American physicist known for his works on supersolidity and strongly correlated systems and pioneering numerical approaches.

Contents

Biography

He received his MSc in physics in 1982 from Moscow Engineering Physics Institute, Moscow, Russia. In 1987, he received his PhD in theoretical physics from Kurchatov Institute (Moscow), under the supervision of Yuri Kagan, where he worked from 1984 to 1999. In 1999, he became a professor at the physics department of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. [1]

Research

He is recognised for his research on strongly correlated states in electronic and bosonic systems, critical phenomena, and quantum Monte Carlo methods. [2]

His and his coauthors have made key contributions to the theory of supersolids includes the theory of superfluidity of crystalline defects, such as the appearance of superfluidity on grain boundaries and in dislocation cores [3] (reviewed in [4] ) and superglass state. [5] He co-invented, with Boris Svistunov and Igor Tupitsyn of the widely used Worm Monte-Carlo algorithm. With Boris Svistunov he invented the Diagrammatic Monte-Carlo method [6] which is stochastic summation of Feynman diagrammatic series which is free from the Numerical sign problem. [7]

He is an elected Fellow of the American Physical Society,  for "pioneering contributions to theories of dissipative quantum dynamics and for innovative Monte Carlo approaches to quantum and classical studies of critical phenomena." [8]

He coauthored the book on modern theory of superfluidity. [9]

Related Research Articles

Metallic hydrogen is a phase of hydrogen in which it behaves like an electrical conductor. This phase was predicted in 1935 on theoretical grounds by Eugene Wigner and Hillard Bell Huntington.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roton</span> Collective excitation in superfluid helium-4 (a quasiparticle)

In theoretical physics, a roton is an elementary excitation, or quasiparticle, seen in superfluid helium-4 and Bose–Einstein condensates with long-range dipolar interactions or spin-orbit coupling. The dispersion relation of elementary excitations in this superfluid shows a linear increase from the origin, but exhibits first a maximum and then a minimum in energy as the momentum increases. Excitations with momenta in the linear region are called phonons; those with momenta close to the minimum are called rotons. Excitations with momenta near the maximum are called maxons.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Supersolid</span> State of matter

In condensed matter physics, a supersolid is a spatially ordered material with superfluid properties. In the case of helium-4, it has been conjectured since the 1960s that it might be possible to create a supersolid. Starting from 2017, a definitive proof for the existence of this state was provided by several experiments using atomic Bose–Einstein condensates. The general conditions required for supersolidity to emerge in a certain substance are a topic of ongoing research.

The Bose–Hubbard model gives a description of the physics of interacting spinless bosons on a lattice. It is closely related to the Hubbard model that originated in solid-state physics as an approximate description of superconducting systems and the motion of electrons between the atoms of a crystalline solid. The model was introduced by Gersch and Knollman in 1963 in the context of granular superconductors. The model rose to prominence in the 1980s after it was found to capture the essence of the superfluid-insulator transition in a way that was much more mathematically tractable than fermionic metal-insulator models.

In applied mathematics, the numerical sign problem is the problem of numerically evaluating the integral of a highly oscillatory function of a large number of variables. Numerical methods fail because of the near-cancellation of the positive and negative contributions to the integral. Each has to be integrated to very high precision in order for their difference to be obtained with useful accuracy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Superfluidity</span> Fluid which flows without losing kinetic energy

Superfluidity is the characteristic property of a fluid with zero viscosity which therefore flows without any loss of kinetic energy. When stirred, a superfluid forms vortices that continue to rotate indefinitely. Superfluidity occurs in two isotopes of helium when they are liquefied by cooling to cryogenic temperatures. It is also a property of various other exotic states of matter theorized to exist in astrophysics, high-energy physics, and theories of quantum gravity. The theory of superfluidity was developed by Soviet theoretical physicists Lev Landau and Isaak Khalatnikov.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tilman Esslinger</span> German physicist

Tilman Esslinger is a German experimental physicist. He is Professor at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, and works in the field of ultracold quantum gases and optical lattices.

The semicircle law, in condensed matter physics, is a mathematical relationship that occurs between quantities measured in the quantum Hall effect. It describes a relationship between the anisotropic and isotropic components of the macroscopic conductivity tensor σ, and, when plotted, appears as a semicircle.

Bose–Einstein condensation can occur in quasiparticles, particles that are effective descriptions of collective excitations in materials. Some have integer spins and can be expected to obey Bose–Einstein statistics like traditional particles. Conditions for condensation of various quasiparticles have been predicted and observed. The topic continues to be an active field of study.

In computational solid state physics, Continuous-time quantum Monte Carlo (CT-QMC) is a family of stochastic algorithms for solving the Anderson impurity model at finite temperature. These methods first expand the full partition function as a series of Feynman diagrams, employ Wick's theorem to group diagrams into determinants, and finally use Markov chain Monte Carlo to stochastically sum up the resulting series.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Massimo Boninsegni</span> Theoretical condensed matter physicist

Massimo Boninsegni is an Italian-Canadian theoretical condensed matter physicist. He graduated with a Bachelor's degree in physics at the Universita' degli Studi di Genova in 1986.

Boris Vladimirovich Svistunov is a Russian-American physicist specialised in the condensed matter physics. He received his MSc in physics in 1983 from Moscow Engineering Physics Institute, Moscow. In 1990, he received his PhD in theoretical physics from Kurchatov Institute (Moscow), where he worked from 1986 to 2003. In 2003, he joined the Physics Department of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he is currently full professor. He is currently also an affiliated faculty member of Wilczek Quantum Center in Shanghai at SJTU and is a participant of Simons collaboration on many electron systems.

Bose–Einstein condensation of polaritons is a growing field in semiconductor optics research, which exhibits spontaneous coherence similar to a laser, but through a different mechanism. A continuous transition from polariton condensation to lasing can be made similar to that of the crossover from a Bose–Einstein condensate to a BCS state in the context of Fermi gases. Polariton condensation is sometimes called “lasing without inversion”.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Crispin Gardiner</span> New Zealand physicist

Crispin William Gardiner is a New Zealand physicist, who has worked in the fields of quantum optics, ultracold atoms and stochastic processes. He has written about 120 journal articles and several books in the fields of quantum optics, stochastic processes and ultracold atoms

Egor Babaev is a Russian-born Swedish physicist. In 2001, he received his PhD in theoretical physics from Uppsala University (Sweden). In 2006 he joined the faculty of the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. In 2007-2013 he shared this position with a faculty appointment at Physics Department of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (USA). He is currently full professor at the Physics Department KTH Royal Institute of Technology.

In mathematical physics, the diagrammatic Monte Carlo method is based on stochastic summation of Feynman diagrams with controllable error bars. It was developed by Boris Svistunov and Nikolay Prokof'ev. It was proposed as a generic approach to overcome the numerical sign problem that precludes simulations of many-body fermionic problems. Diagrammatic Monte Carlo works in the thermodynamic limit, and its computational complexity does not scale exponentially with system or cluster volume.

Francesca Ferlaino is an Italian-Austrian experimental physicist known for her research on quantum matter. She is a professor of physics at the University of Innsbruck.

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.

Dietrich Belitz is an American theoretical physicist on the faculty of the University of Oregon. He studies statistical mechanics and condensed matter physics.

References

  1. "Nikolai Prokof'ev | Physics Department | UMass Amherst". Physics Department at UMass Amherst. Retrieved 2018-09-30.
  2. "Nikolay Prokofiev - Google Scholar Citations". scholar.google.com. Retrieved 2018-09-28.
  3. Prokof’ev, Nikolay; Svistunov, Boris (2005-04-20). "Supersolid State of Matter". Physical Review Letters. 94 (15): 155302. arXiv: cond-mat/0409472 . Bibcode:2005PhRvL..94o5302P. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.94.155302. PMID   15904155. S2CID   45498667.
  4. "Superfluid States of Matter". CRC Press. 2015-04-15. Retrieved 2018-10-04.
  5. Boninsegni, Massimo; Prokof’ev, Nikolay; Svistunov, Boris (2006-03-16). "Superglass Phase of $^{4}\mathrm{He}$". Physical Review Letters. 96 (10): 105301. arXiv: cond-mat/0512103 . doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.96.105301. PMID   16605751. S2CID   118886810.
  6. "slides" (PDF).
  7. Rossi, R.; Prokof'ev, N.; Svistunov, B.; Van Houcke, K.; Werner, F. (2017-04-01). "Polynomial complexity despite the fermionic sign". EPL (Europhysics Letters). 118 (1): 10004. arXiv: 1703.10141 . Bibcode:2017EL....11810004R. doi:10.1209/0295-5075/118/10004. ISSN   0295-5075. S2CID   17929942.
  8. "APS Fellow Archive". www.aps.org. Retrieved 2018-09-28.
  9. "Superfluid States in Nature and the Laboratory", Superfluid States of Matter, CRC Press, 2015-04-15, pp. 523–544, doi:10.1201/b18346-21, ISBN   9781439802755