Vladimir Zelevinsky

Professor of Physics

About

  • Joined the laboratory in August 1992
  • Theoretical nuclear physics
  • Contact information
  • 2-volume textbook "Quantum Physics" was published by "Wiley" in 2011
  • Textbook "Physics of Atomic Nuclei" (together with Alexander Volya) was published by "Wiley" in 2017

Education and training

  • MS, Physics, Moscow University, 1960
  • PhD, Physics, Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics Novosibirsk, 1964

Research

A complex nucleus is a great example of a mesoscopic system, in between the microscopic and macroscopic worlds, with a wealth of problems typical for both. There is a rich interplay between many strongly interacting particles, with its "average" or mean-field structure, vibrations and rotations, collective waves, superconducting pairing, fundamental symmetries and their violations, as well as complicated decays and reactions. The interactions bring in chaotic motion and thermalization with no external heat bath. Apart from obvious technological and medical applications, we are now on the way to quantum informatics where nuclear analogs are very useful.

Biography

I received my high education at Moscow State University, then post-graduate at Kurchatov Center of Nuclear Physics (Moscow) and at the Budker Institute (Novosibirsk) where I remained for many years, becoming Head of the Theory Division and Head of Theoretical Physics at Novosibirsk State University. I moved to Michigan State University in 1992. You can read more about mu life and career path in this recent article. My research interests are in many-body quantum physics.

How students can contribute as part of my research team

There are very promising directions of future research: collective motion in weakly-bound nuclei, alpha correlations along with normal pairing, quantum chaos, symmetries and their violation, and nuclear reactions as prototypes for quantum-information processes.

Scientific publications