Boris Chirikov
Encyclopedia
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
Борис Валерианович Чириков)
(June 6, 1928 – February 12, 2008) was an outstanding Soviet and Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n physicist
Physicist
A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...
.
He was the founder of the physical theory of Hamiltonian chaos
Chaos theory
Chaos theory is a field of study in mathematics, with applications in several disciplines including physics, economics, biology, and philosophy. Chaos theory studies the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions, an effect which is popularly referred to as the...
and made pioneering contributions to the theory of quantum chaos
Quantum chaos
Quantum chaos is a branch of physics which studies how chaotic classical dynamical systems can be described in terms of quantum theory. The primary question that quantum chaos seeks to answer is, "What is the relationship between quantum mechanics and classical chaos?" The correspondence principle...
. In 1959, he invented the Chirikov criterion
Chirikov criterion
The Chirikov criterion or Chirikov resonance-overlap criterionwas established by the Russian physicist Boris Chirikov.Back in 1959, he published a seminal article ,...
which gives an analytical estimate for the overlap of resonances and provides the conditions for transition from integrability to global chaos in Hamiltonian dynamical systems.
Life and physics
Boris Chirikov was born in the city OryolOryol
Oryol or Orel is a city and the administrative center of Oryol Oblast, Russia, located on the Oka River, approximately south-southwest of Moscow...
, Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, USSR. Graduated from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 1952, he worked with Budker at the Kurchatov Institute
Kurchatov Institute
The Kurchatov Institute is Russia's leading research and development institution in the field of nuclear energy. In the Soviet Union it was known as I. V. Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy , abbreviated KIAE . It is named after Igor Kurchatov....
and moved with him to Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
in September 1959 to work at the Institute founded by Budker in Akademgorodok
Akademgorodok
Akademgorodok , is a part of the Russian city Novosibirsk, located 20 km south of the city center. It is the educational and scientific centre of Siberia...
, Novosibirsk
Novosibirsk
Novosibirsk is the third-largest city in Russia, after Moscow and Saint Petersburg, and the largest city of Siberia, with a population of 1,473,737 . It is the administrative center of Novosibirsk Oblast as well as of the Siberian Federal District...
(now Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics
Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics
The Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics is one of the major centres of advanced study of nuclear physics in Russia. It is located in the Siberian town Akademgorodok, on Academician Lavrentiev Avenue. The institute was founded by Gersh Itskovich Budker in 1959...
). He became a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Russian Academy of Sciences
The Russian Academy of Sciences consists of the national academy of Russia and a network of scientific research institutes from across the Russian Federation as well as auxiliary scientific and social units like libraries, publishers and hospitals....
in 1983, and a full member in 1992. He worked at the Institute in Akademgorodok
Akademgorodok
Akademgorodok , is a part of the Russian city Novosibirsk, located 20 km south of the city center. It is the educational and scientific centre of Siberia...
till his last days. He left after him wife Olga Bashina and daughter Galya Chirikova.
The name of Boris Chirikov is associated with an impressive list of fundamental results in the field of dynamical chaos and foundations of statistical mechanics
Statistical mechanics
Statistical mechanics or statistical thermodynamicsThe terms statistical mechanics and statistical thermodynamics are used interchangeably...
. As early as 1959, in a seminal article, Chirikov proposed a criterion for the emergence of classical chaos in Hamiltonian systems, now known as the Chirikov criterion
Chirikov criterion
The Chirikov criterion or Chirikov resonance-overlap criterionwas established by the Russian physicist Boris Chirikov.Back in 1959, he published a seminal article ,...
(Atom. Energ. 6: 630 (1959)). In the same paper, he applied such criterion to explain some puzzling experimental results on plasma confinement in open mirror traps, that had just been obtained at the Kurchatov Institute
Kurchatov Institute
The Kurchatov Institute is Russia's leading research and development institution in the field of nuclear energy. In the Soviet Union it was known as I. V. Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy , abbreviated KIAE . It is named after Igor Kurchatov....
. This was the very first physical theory of chaos, which succeeded in explaining a concrete experiment, and which was developed long before computers made the icons of chaos familiar to everyone.
Other results obtained by his group include: analysis of the transition to strong chaos in the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam problem; the derivation of the chaos border for the Fermi acceleration model; the numerical computation of the Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy in area-preserving maps; the investigations of weak instabilities in many-dimensional Hamiltonian systems (Arnold diffusion and modulational diffusion); the demonstration that the homogeneous models of classical Yang-Mills field have positive Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy, and therefore are generally not integrable; the discovery of the power law decay of Poincaré recurrences in Hamiltonian systems with divided phase space; the demonstration that the dynamics of the Halley comet is chaotic, and is described by a simple map.
He essentially invented the
Chirikov standard map, described its chaotic properties, established its ubiquity, and found a variety of applications. The quantum version of this map provides canonical kicked rotator model and demonstrates the phenomenon of dynamical localization of quantum chaos
Quantum chaos
Quantum chaos is a branch of physics which studies how chaotic classical dynamical systems can be described in terms of quantum theory. The primary question that quantum chaos seeks to answer is, "What is the relationship between quantum mechanics and classical chaos?" The correspondence principle...
, which has been observed, for example, in experiments with hydrogen and Rydberg atom
Rydberg atom
thumb|right|300px|Figure 1: Energy levels in atomic [[lithium]] showing the Rydberg series of the lowest 3 values of [[Angular momentum#Angular momentum in quantum mechanics|orbital angular momentum]] converging on the first ionization energy....
s in a microwave field and cold atoms and Bose-Einstein condensates in kicked optical lattices.
The physical theory of deterministic chaos developed by Boris Chirikov has found applications in solar system dynamics, particle dynamics in accelerators and plasma magnetic traps, and numerous other systems.
See also
- Chirikov standard map and standard map
- Chirikov criterionChirikov criterionThe Chirikov criterion or Chirikov resonance-overlap criterionwas established by the Russian physicist Boris Chirikov.Back in 1959, he published a seminal article ,...
External links
- website dedicated to Boris Chirikov
- Boris Chirikov at Scholarpedia
- Reminiscences of Boris Chirikov at Scholarpedia
- J.Bellissard, D.L.Shepelyanski, "Boris Chirikov, a pioneer in classical and quantum chaos", Annales de l'institut Henri Poincare (A) Physique theorique 68: 379 (1998) (and also here)
- Special Volume dedicated to 70th of Boris Chirikov: Physica D 131:1-4 vii (1999) and arXiv
- Article at CERN Courier (2003)
- Obituary at CERN Courier,Obituary at Physics Today, June (2008)
- Articles in Russian: Nauka v Sibiri (1988),Nauka v Sibiri (1998), Uspekhi Fiz. Nauk (1998),Vestnik Akademii Nauk (2005),Nauka v Sibiri (2008), UFN (2008), Izv. Vuzov PND (2008), Enciclopedia Luchshie Lyudi Rossii (2009), Novosibirsk State University (2009)