Johann Rafelski
Encyclopedia
Johann Rafelski is a German
-American
theoretical physicist and author. He is Professor of Physics at The University of Arizona
in Tucson, guest scientist at CERN
(Geneva
), and has been LMU-Excellent Guest Professor at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Munich
, Germany.
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 in deconfined quark–gluon plasma formed in relativistic heavy ion collisions; the formation of matter out of quark-gluon plasma in the hadronization
process, also in the early Universe
; the ascent of ultrashort laser light pulses as a new tool in this domain of physics. He has also contributed to the physics of table top Muon-catalyzed fusion
, antimatter
formation and annihilation
, and artificial intelligence
.
(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 of National Bureau of Standards (now National Institute of Standards and Technology
). In spring 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, where he worked with Rolf Hagedorn
and John S. Bell
; Rafelski remains associated with CERN to this day. 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 and with Berndt Muller (today Duke University
) and one of his first students, Gerhard Soff (Dresden University of Technology
, deceased). Rafelski then accepted the chair of Theoretical Physics at the University of Cape Town
(South Africa
) 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 working at the Los Alamos National Laboratory
. 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.
During the past 30 years Rafelski's primary research objective has been the understanding of the vacuum, the Lorentz Invariant Aether
. He contributed to the development of the heavy ion research program to study the deconfinement of quarks and gluons in hot QCD as result of change in vacuum structure.
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
-American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
theoretical physicist and author. He is Professor of Physics at The University of Arizona
University of Arizona
The University of Arizona is a land-grant and space-grant public institution of higher education and research located in Tucson, Arizona, United States. The University of Arizona was the first university in the state of Arizona, founded in 1885...
in Tucson, guest scientist at CERN
CERN
The European Organization for Nuclear Research , known as CERN , is an international organization whose purpose is to operate the world's largest particle physics laboratory, which is situated in the northwest suburbs of Geneva on the Franco–Swiss border...
(Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
), and has been LMU-Excellent Guest Professor at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
, Germany.
Rafelski’s current research interests center around investigation of the vacuum structure of QCD
Quantum chromodynamics
In theoretical physics, quantum chromodynamics is a theory of the strong interaction , a fundamental force describing the interactions of the quarks and gluons making up hadrons . It is the study of the SU Yang–Mills theory of color-charged fermions...
and QED
Quantum electrodynamics
Quantum electrodynamics is the relativistic quantum field theory of electrodynamics. In essence, it describes how light and matter interact and is the first theory where full agreement between quantum mechanics and special relativity is achieved...
in the presence of strong fields; study of the QCD vacuum structure and deconfinement with strange particle production in deconfined quark–gluon plasma formed in relativistic heavy ion collisions; the formation of matter out of quark-gluon plasma in the hadronization
Hadronization
In particle physics, hadronization is the process of the formation of hadrons out of quarks and gluons. This occurs after high-energy collisions in a particle collider in which free quarks or gluons are created. Due to postulated colour confinement, these cannot exist individually...
process, also in the early Universe
Big Bang
The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model that explains the early development of the Universe. According to the Big Bang theory, the Universe was once in an extremely hot and dense state which expanded rapidly. This rapid expansion caused the young Universe to cool and resulted in...
; the ascent of ultrashort laser light pulses as a new tool in this domain of physics. He has also contributed to the physics of table top Muon-catalyzed fusion
Muon-catalyzed fusion
Muon-catalyzed fusion is a process allowing nuclear fusion to take place at temperatures significantly lower than the temperatures required for thermonuclear fusion, even at room temperature or lower...
, antimatter
Antimatter
In particle physics, antimatter is the extension of the concept of the antiparticle to matter, where antimatter is composed of antiparticles in the same way that normal matter is composed of particles...
formation and annihilation
Annihilation
Annihilation is defined as "total destruction" or "complete obliteration" of an object; having its root in the Latin nihil . A literal translation is "to make into nothing"....
, and artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
.
Career
Rafelski studied physics at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, where he received his Ph.D. in the spring of 1973 working with Walter Greiner on Strong Fields, QED Vacuum and Positron Production. In 1973 he began a series of postdoctoral fellowships: first at the University of PennsylvaniaUniversity of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
(Philadelphia) with Abraham Klein, then at the Argonne National Laboratory
Argonne National Laboratory
Argonne National Laboratory is the first science and engineering research national laboratory in the United States, receiving this designation on July 1, 1946. It is the largest national laboratory by size and scope in the Midwest...
near Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
where he worked with John W. Clark of Washington University in St. Louis
Washington University in St. Louis
Washington University in St. Louis is a private research university located in suburban St. Louis, Missouri. Founded in 1853, and named for George Washington, the university has students and faculty from all fifty U.S. states and more than 110 nations...
and Michael Danos of National Bureau of Standards (now National Institute of Standards and Technology
National Institute of Standards and Technology
The National Institute of Standards and Technology , known between 1901 and 1988 as the National Bureau of Standards , is a measurement standards laboratory, otherwise known as a National Metrological Institute , which is a non-regulatory agency of the United States Department of Commerce...
). In spring 1977 Rafelski moved for a few months to work at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research
Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung
The GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research GmbH in the Wixhausen suburb of Darmstadt, Germany is a federally and state co-funded heavy ion research center. The current director of GSI is Horst Stöcker who succeeded Walter F...
in Germany, then continued on to a fellowship at CERN, where he worked with Rolf Hagedorn
Rolf Hagedorn
Rolf Hagedorn was a German theoretical physicists working at CERN. He is known for the idea that hadronic matter has a "melting point". The Hagedorn temperature is named in his honor.-Early life:...
and John S. Bell
John Stewart Bell
John Stewart Bell FRS was a British physicist from Northern Ireland , and the originator of Bell's theorem, a significant theorem in quantum physics regarding hidden variable theories.- Early life and work :...
; Rafelski remains associated with CERN to this day. 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 and with Berndt Muller (today Duke University
Duke University
Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...
) and one of his first students, Gerhard Soff (Dresden University of Technology
Dresden University of Technology
The Technische Universität Dresden is the largest institute of higher education in the city of Dresden, the largest university in Saxony and one of the 10 largest universities in Germany with 36,066 students...
, deceased). Rafelski then accepted the chair of Theoretical Physics at the University of Cape Town
University of Cape Town
The University of Cape Town is a public research university located in Cape Town in the Western Cape province of South Africa. UCT was founded in 1829 as the South African College, and is the oldest university in South Africa and the second oldest extant university in Africa.-History:The roots of...
(South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
) 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.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
His interests in Muon-catalyzed fusion and other table-top fusion methods led him to a collaboration led by Steven E. Jones working at the Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory, managed and operated by Los Alamos National Security , located in Los Alamos, New Mexico...
. 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.
During the past 30 years Rafelski's primary research objective has been the understanding of the vacuum, the Lorentz Invariant Aether
Lorentz ether theory
What is now often called Lorentz Ether theory has its roots in Hendrik Lorentz's "Theory of electrons", which was the final point in the development of the classical aether theories at the end of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century....
. He contributed to the development of the heavy ion research program to study the deconfinement of quarks and gluons in hot QCD as result of change in vacuum structure.
Biography
Rafelski was born in Krakow, Poland, on May 19, 1950 as a second child to Holocaust survivors Myriam Jutrzenka (Morgenstern) and Itzac Pufeles, of Polish, German and Austrian descent. The family escaped Communist Poland in 1964 and settled in Frankfurt, Germany. In 1973 Rafelski married Helga Betz; their union produced two children. Dr. Helga Rafelski died of cancer in 2000. In 2003 Rafelski married Victoria Grossack.Selected publications
Rafelski has published over 350 research papers and has many other written contributions. Here is a selection:- with Lewis P. Fulcher and Walter Greiner, Superheavy elements and an upper limit to the electric field strength, Phys. Rev. Lett. 27, pp 958–961 (1971) http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.27.958
- with Berndt Müller and Walter Greiner, The Charged Vacuum in overcritical fields, Nucl. Phys. B68 p585-604 (1974) http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0550-3213(74)90333-2
- with Abraham Klein and Lewis P. Fulcher, Fermions and Bosons interaction with arbitrarily strong external fields, Physics Reports 38, pp 227–361 (1978). (research monograph) http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0370-1573(78)90116-3
- with Abraham Klein and Louis P. Fulcher, The Decay of the Vacuum, Scientific American, 241, (1979). (Issue no. 6 pp 150–159)
- Formation and Observables of the Quark-Gluon Plasma, Physics Reports v88, pp331–346 (1982) http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0370-1573(82)90083-7 (note: this opens the entire volume, pp321–413 the individual articles are not accessible separately)
- with Michael Danos: Perspectives in high energy nuclear collisions, (research monograph), published by NBS, Washington DC and by GSI, Darmstadt 1983. Available from NTIS, Department of Commerce, http://www.ntis.gov/search/product.aspx?ABBR=PB83223982
- with Walter Greiner: Spezielle Relativitätstheorie (Special Theory of Relativity) available at Amazon.de http://www.amazon.de/Theoretische-Physik-Erg-Bde-Spezielle-Relativit%C3%A4tstheorie/dp/381711205X (Deutsch, Thun 1984, and later editions), ISBN 3-87144-711-0.
- with Walter Greiner und Berndt Müller: Quantum electrodynamics of strong fields. (Springer, Berlin 1985), ISBN 3-540-13404-2.
- with Berndt Müller: Die Struktur des Vakuums. Ein Dialog über das Nichts. (Deutsch, Thun 1985), ISBN 3-87144-888-5. English translation: The Structure of the Vacuum: A Conversation about Nothing. Harri Deutsch Publishers, 1985, ISBN 3-87144-889-3 http://www.physics.arizona.edu/~rafelski/Books/StructVacuumE.pdf
- with John W. Clark and J.V. Winston, Brain without mind: Computer simulation of neural networks with modifiable neuronal interactions Physics Reports v123, pp 215–273 (1985).(research monograph) http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0370-1573(85)90038-9
- with Steven E. Jones, Cold nuclear fusion, Scientific American, 257, (1987). (Issue no.7 pp84–89)
- with Peter Koch and Berndt Müller: Strangeness in Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions, Physics Reports v142, pp167–262 (1986) (research monograph) http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0370-1573(86)90096-7
- with Steven Jones, Hendrik Monkhorst (editors and authors): Muon Catalyzed Fusion, Vol. 181 (1989). ISBN 0-88318-381-1 http://proceedings.aip.org/proceedings/confproceed/181.jsp
- with Hans Gutbrod (editors and authors): Particle Production in highly excited matter. Plenum Press, NATO Science Series: B: , Vol. 303, 1993. ISBN 978-0-306-44413-5
- Strangeness in hadronic matter (editor and author) American Institute of Physics Conference Proceedings , Vol. 340 (1995) ISBN 978-1-56396-489-3 http://proceedings.aip.org/proceedings/confproceed/340.jsp
- with Jean Letessier, Hans Gutbrod (editors and authors): Hot hadronic matter: theory and experiment, in honor of R. Hagedorn 75th birthday. Plenum Press, NATO Science Series: B: , Vol. 346 1995. ISBN 978-0-306-45008-2
- with Emanuele Quercigh, A strange quark plasma, Physics World v13, p37 ( Oct. 1, 2000) http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/print/443
- with Hans-Th. Elze, E. Ferreira, T. Kodama, R.L. Thews (editors and authors.), New States of Matter in Hadronic Interactions AIP Conference Proceedings Vol. 631 (2002) ISBN 978-0-7354-0086-3 Online edition at: http://proceedings.aip.org/dbt/dbt.jsp?KEY=APCPCS&Volume=631&Issue=1
- with Jean Letessier: Hadrons and Quark-Gluon Plasmas. Cambridge University Press 2002, Available to read at: at http://site.ebrary.com/pub/cambridgepress/docDetail.action?isbn=0521385369
- with Torleif Ericson: The tale of the Hagedorn temperature, CERN Courier, September 4, 2003 http://cerncourier.com/cws/article/cern/28919
- with J. Kapusta, B. Müller (editors and authors.): Quark-Gluon Plasma. Theoretical Foundations. Elsevier 2003. http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/bookdescription.cws_home/672804/description#description
- with G. Mourou and T. Tajima The light-pulse horizon, CERN Courier, February 23, 2009 http://cerncourier.com/cws/article/cern/37860