Volker Heine | |
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Born | Hamburg, Germany | September 19, 1930
Alma mater | |
Awards |
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Scientific career | |
Fields | Condensed matter physics, materials science |
Institutions | University of Cambridge |
Doctoral advisor | Sir Nevill Mott |
Doctoral students | John Pendry |
Volker Heine FRS (born 19 September 1930) is a German-born New Zealand and British physicist who is a Professor Emeritus at University of Cambridge. He is considered a pioneer of theoretical and computational studies of the electronic structure of solids and liquids and the determination of physical properties derived from it.
Born in Hamburg, Germany, Volker Heine was educated at Wanganui Collegiate School and the University of Otago (New Zealand). In 1954, he came to University of Cambridge on a Shell Post-Graduate Scholarship to do his Ph.D. in physics (1956) as student of Sir Nevill Mott. In the following years he obtained a Fellowship at Clare College and became part of the new theory group in the Cavendish Laboratory and apart from a post-doc year and several sabbaticals and summer visits in the US, he stayed in Cambridge for the remainder of his career. In 1976, Heine became a professor and took over as head of the theory group which was by then called "Theory of Condensed Matter". He held that position until his retirement in 1997. [1]
Volker Heine has been a very active figure in the international scientific community, shaping in particular the landscape of the field of atomistic computer simulations in Europe. He initiated and later led the Psi-k [2] network, a worldwide network of researchers working on the advancement of first-principles computational materials science. Psi-k's mission is to develop fundamental theory, algorithms, and computer codes in order to understand, predict, and design materials properties and functions. Key activities of Psi-k are the organization of conferences, workshops, tutorials and training schools as well as the dissemination of scientific thinking in society.
Volker Heine was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1974 and of the American Physical Society in 1987. He was awarded the Maxwell Medal and Prize in 1972, the Royal Medal of the Royal Society (London) in 1993, the Dirac Medal of the Institute of Physics in 1994, and the Max Born Prize in 2001. He has been visiting professor at several universities around the world and External Scientific Member of the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart.
Heine is married to Daphne Heine with three children.
Volker Heine's research essentially covered three areas: (a) Understanding the behavior of materials from the calculation of their electronic structure; (b) Understanding the origin of incommensurately modulated materials; (c) Understanding the structure and properties of minerals from an atomic point of view. His main research topic is electronic structure theory and particularly the development of various fundamental concepts for condensed matter physics. Here, his pioneering work on pseudopotentials [3] [4] forms a basis of most presently undertaken electronic structure and total-energy calculations, in particular for semiconductors and so-called sp-bonded metals. [5] [6] He also developed the basic description of electron-phonon coupling, [7] and much of our understanding of the structure and atomic relaxation at surfaces was established by Heine. [6] Furthermore, his groundbreaking work on the complex band structure and pioneering ideas in the theory of surface states provides the basis of present-day description and understanding of electronic properties of bulk and interfaces. [8] [9] [10] This includes the concept of metal-induced gap states at metal-semiconductor heterostructures and the understanding of Schottky barriers. [11] Amongst his seminal contributions are also the formulation of a recursion method for electronic structure studies, [9] a theory of incommensurate structures of polytypes of silicon carbide, [12] [13] [14] and a model for incommensurate and framework structures of minerals. [15] [16] [17] [18] He studied magnetic properties of solids, [19] [20] various aspects of crystal phase transitions e.g. [21] [22] and thermal expansion [23] and more. Volker Heine has published more than 200 research papers, several review articles and one text book. [24]
Allotropy or allotropism is the property of some chemical elements to exist in two or more different forms, in the same physical state, known as allotropes of the elements. Allotropes are different structural modifications of an element: the atoms of the element are bonded together in different manners. For example, the allotropes of carbon include diamond, graphite, graphene, and fullerenes.
PLATO is a suite of programs for electronic structure calculations. It receives its name from the choice of basis set used to expand the electronic wavefunctions.
Quantum 1/f noise is an intrinsic and fundamental part of quantum mechanics. Fighter pilots, photographers, and scientists all appreciate the higher quality of images and signals resulting from the consideration of quantum 1/f noise. Engineers have battled unwanted 1/f noise since 1925, giving it poetic names due to its mysterious nature. The Quantum 1/f noise theory was developed about 50 years later, describing the nature of 1/f noise, allowing it to be explained and calculated via straightforward engineering formulas. It allows for the low-noise optimization of materials, devices and systems of most high-technology applications of modern industry and science. The theory includes the conventional and coherent quantum 1/f effects (Q1/fE). Both effects are combined in a general engineering formula, and present in Q1/f noise, which is itself most of fundamental 1/f noise. The latter is defined as the result of the simultaneous presence of nonlinearity and a certain type of homogeneity in a system, and can be quantum or classical.
In physics, a pseudopotential or effective potential is used as an approximation for the simplified description of complex systems. Applications include atomic physics and neutron scattering. The pseudopotential approximation was first introduced by Hans Hellmann in 1934.
Mott insulators are a class of materials that are expected to conduct electricity according to conventional band theories, but turn out to be insulators. These insulators fail to be correctly described by band theories of solids due to their strong electron–electron interactions, which are not considered in conventional band theory. A Mott transition is a transition from a metal to an insulator, driven by the strong interactions between electrons. One of the simplest models that can capture Mott transition is the Hubbard model.
Jozef T. Devreese was a Belgian scientist, with a long career in condensed matter physics. He was professor emeritus of theoretical physics at the University of Antwerp. He died on November 1, 2023.
Marvin Lou Cohen is an American–Canadian theoretical physicist. He is a physics professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Cohen is a leading expert in the field of condensed matter physics. He is widely known for his seminal work on the electronic structure of solids.
The coherent potential approximation (CPA) is a method, in theoretical physics, of finding the averaged Green's function of an inhomogeneous system. The Green's function obtained via the CPA then describes an effective medium whose scattering properties represent the averaged scattering properties of the disordered system being approximated. It is often described as the 'best' single-site theory for obtaining the averaged Green's function. It is perhaps most famous for its use in describing the physical properties of alloys and disordered magnetic systems, although it is also a useful concept in understanding how sound waves scatter in a material which displays spatial inhomogeneity. The coherent potential approximation was first described by Paul Soven, and its application in the context of calculations of the electronic structure of materials was pioneered by Balász Győrffy.
In crystallography, a disclination is a line defect in which there is compensation of an angular gap. They were first discussed by Vito Volterra in 1907, who provided an analysis of the elastic strains of a wedge disclination. By analogy to dislocations in crystals, the term, disinclination, was first used by Frederick Charles Frank and since then has been modified to its current usage, disclination. They have since been analyzed in some detail particularly by Roland deWit.
In bulk semiconductor band structure calculations, it is assumed that the crystal lattice of the material is infinite. When the finite size of a crystal is taken into account, the wavefunctions of electrons are altered and states that are forbidden within the bulk semiconductor gap are allowed at the surface. Similarly, when a metal is deposited onto a semiconductor, the wavefunction of an electron in the semiconductor must match that of an electron in the metal at the interface. Since the Fermi levels of the two materials must match at the interface, there exists gap states that decay deeper into the semiconductor.
The WIEN2k package is a computer program written in Fortran which performs quantum mechanical calculations on periodic solids. It uses the full-potential (linearized) augmented plane-wave and local-orbitals [FP-(L)APW+lo] basis set to solve the Kohn–Sham equations of density functional theory.
The Korringa–Kohn–Rostoker (KKR) method is used to calculate the electronic band structure of periodic solids. In the derivation of the method using multiple scattering theory by Jan Korringa and the derivation based on the Kohn and Rostoker variational method, the muffin-tin approximation was used. Later calculations are done with full potentials having no shape restrictions.
The hexatic phase is a state of matter that is between the solid and the isotropic liquid phases in two dimensional systems of particles. It is characterized by two order parameters: a short-range positional and a quasi-long-range orientational (sixfold) order. More generally, a hexatic is any phase that contains sixfold orientational order, in analogy with the nematic phase.
Alex Zunger is a theoretical physicist, research professor, at the University of Colorado Boulder. He has authored more than 150 papers in Physical Review Letters and Physical Reviews B Rapid Communication, has an h-index over 150, number of citations over 113,000. He co-authored one of the top-five most cited papers ever to be published in the Physical Review family in its over 100 years' history.
Peter Heszler was a Hungarian physicist. He is well known for, among others, his research on laser-assisted nanoparticle synthesis. His research included nanotechnology, condensed matter physics, materials science, fluctuations and noise, laser science and chemical sensors, including fluctuation-enhanced sensing.
Swift heavy ions are the components of a type of particle beam with high enough energy that electronic stopping dominates over nuclear stopping. They are accelerated in particle accelerators to very high energies, typically in the MeV or GeV range and have sufficient energy and mass to penetrate solids on a straight line. In many solids swift heavy ions release sufficient energy to induce permanently modified cylindrical zones, so-called ion tracks. If the irradiation is carried out in an initially crystalline material, ion tracks consist of an amorphous cylinder. Ion tracks can be produced in many amorphizing materials, but not in pure metals, where the high electronic heat conductivity dissipates away the electronic heating before the ion track has time to form.
Lithium molybdenum purple bronze is a chemical compound with formula Li
0.9Mo
6O
17, that is, a mixed oxide of molybdenum and lithium. It can be obtained as flat crystals with a purple-red color and metallic sheen.
Quantum Hall transitions are the quantum phase transitions that occur between different robustly quantized electronic phases of the quantum Hall effect. The robust quantization of these electronic phases is due to strong localization of electrons in their disordered, two-dimensional potential. But, at the quantum Hall transition, the electron gas delocalizes as can be observed in the laboratory. This phenomenon is understood in the language of topological field theory. Here, a vacuum angle distinguishes between topologically different sectors in the vacuum. These topological sectors correspond to the robustly quantized phases. The quantum Hall transitions can then be understood by looking at the topological excitations (instantons) that occur between those phases.
Brian Kidd Ridley was a British solid-state physicist specialising in semiconductor theory. He was an emeritus professor at the University of Essex.
The disordered local moment (DLM) picture is a method, in condensed matter physics, for describing the electronic structure of a magnetic material at a finite temperature, where a probability distribution of sizes and orientations of atomic magnetic moments must be considered. Its was pioneered, among others, by Balázs Győrffy, Julie Staunton, Malcolm Stocks, and co-workers.