Joseph Polchinski 教授對理論物理作出了哪些重要的貢獻？

02-15

大師遠去，他的工作對理論物理產生了哪些重要的影響？

張建東：Polchinski 回憶錄漢化V1.0.5發布?

zhuanlan.zhihu.com

謝邀，首先歡迎關注Polchinski的回憶錄，裡面詳細的介紹了Polchinski的學術生涯及學術貢獻。

列舉一些我個人聽說過的文章

最知名：

關於Wilson 重整化群的工作：通過引入高能截斷，積分掉高能部分的方法得到有效場論中耦合常數跑動的Wilson－Polchinski 方程，並闡述了量子場論中的可重整性問題。

Renormalization and effective lagrangians?

www.sciencedirect.com

關於弦論中D膜的發現

Dirichlet Branes and Ramond-Ramond Charges?

journals.aps.org

黑洞火牆問題的AMPS佯謬，指出黑洞視界的光滑性，量子力學的幺正性以及有效場論在黑洞視界附近成立三者的矛盾，提出黑洞表面可能存在火牆，至今仍在被廣泛研究

Black holes: complementarity or firewalls??

link.springer.com

其他文章：

很有名的利用有效理論解釋超導的Lecture

https://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-th/9210046.pdf?

arxiv.org

AdS／CFT中的UV／IR relation

UV-IR relations in AdS dynamics?

journals.aps.org

尺度不變性和共形不變性的關係

Scale and conformal invariance in quantum field theory?

www.sciencedirect.com

以及生病之前關於二維引力和最新的SYK模型的文章

arxiv: 1402.6334

arxiv: 1601.06768

arxiv:1611.04560

這裡列舉的有非常大的本人的局限性，Polchinski教授是引領弦論第二次革命的重要人物，在弦論的發展歷史上做出了其他很多重大工作。與此同時，Polchinski也寫了很多介紹AdS／CFT和D膜的Lecture，而且他的兩卷的弦論教材也是學習弦論的重要讀物。

高山仰止，景行行止。像大師致敬。

約瑟夫·波爾欽斯基（1954.5.16-2018.2.2），出生在紐約白原市，在很小的時候就對科學有著濃厚的興趣。他先後在加州理工大學和加州大學伯克利分校求學，並在斯坦福直線加速器中心（SLAC）和哈佛大學做博士後。隨後他在德州大學奧斯丁分校擔任助教，進入了一代宗師溫伯格的研究團隊。此後他就任於加州大學聖芭芭拉分校。

這期間，波爾欽斯基的求學之路並非一帆風順。在其自傳中，波爾欽斯基介紹說，自己在讀博士期間，由於選題過難，導致顆粒無收，一篇論文也沒發表。若非導師強力推薦，他很難獲得博士後的機會。而頗為有趣的是，在做博士後兩個月之後，他就發表了他在哈佛的第一篇論文。而他在求學期間，恰好經歷了量子場論的飛速發展與第一次超弦革命，這對他未來的研究有著很大的影響。

作為一位傑出的理論物理學家，波爾欽斯基最偉大的貢獻當屬D-Brane理論（翻譯為D膜或者D胚理論，前者較常用，但是會帶來很多誤解和不便）。此外還有與蟲洞有關的波爾欽斯基悖論等。俗話說，提出一個好的問題比解決問題更重要，在2012年，波爾欽斯基和另外3位科學家一同提出了黑洞的火牆佯謬，這一問題的提出使得黑洞信息悖論的戰爭重燃戰火，有力地促進了AdS-CFT理論的發展（例如ER=EPR等）。

然而，在這位理論物理學家正鬥志旺盛的時候，無情的病魔悄然來襲。多年來，關於他罹患腦癌的傳言一直在科學界流傳。終於在去年8月31日，波爾欽斯基在預印本上發表了《一名理論物理學家的回憶》一文，向外界證實了自己的重病（此文已經由張建東等人翻譯，可以在網上找到）。如今，這位謙遜的物理學家的生命的琴弦已經戛然而止，但是他留給我們的

由於個人不了解這位大師，維基百科了一下，囫圇吞棗發現還不能完全理解大師的貢獻，只好做做搬運工，希望諒解，摘自維基百科(地址：https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Polchinski)

Joseph Polchinski

Joseph Polchinski (May 16, 1954 – February 2, 2018) was an American theoretical physicist and string theorist.[2][3]

Joseph Polchinski

Joseph Polchinski.jpg

Joe Polchinski in Santa Barbara

Born 16 May 1954

White Plains, New York

Died 2 February 2018 (aged 63)

Known for D-branes[1]

Polchinskis paradox

Firewall

Everett phone

Awards Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics (2007)

Dirac Medal (2008)

Physics Frontier Prize (2013)

Fundamental Physics Prize (2017)

Scientific career

Institutions University of California, Santa Barbara

Doctoral advisor Stanley Mandelstam

Life

Polchinski graduated from Canyon del Oro High School in Tucson, Arizona in 1971, obtained his B.S. degree from Caltech in 1975, and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1980 under the supervision of Stanley Mandelstam. After postdoctoral positions at SLAC (1980–82) and Harvard (1982–84) he was professor at the University of Texas at Austin from 1984 to 1992. Since 1992 he has been professor in the Physics Department of the University of California, Santa Barbara and a permanent member of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics there.[4]

Polchinski wrote the two-volume textbook String Theory, published in 1998. Among his many contributions to theoretical physics, D-branes are the best known. In 2008 he won the Dirac Medal for his work in superstring theory.[5] He won the 2017 Fundamental Physics Prize.[6]

Contributions

Polchinskis paradox

In an unpublished communication to Kip Thorne circa 1990, commenting on the Novikov self-consistency principle (in relation to sending objects or people through a traversable wormhole into the past, and the time paradoxes that could result), Polchinski raised a potentially paradoxical situation involving a billiard ball sent through a wormhole which sends it back in time. In this scenario, the ball is fired into a wormhole at an angle such that, if it continues along that path, it will exit the wormhole in the past at just the right angle to collide with its earlier self, thereby knocking it off course and preventing it from entering the wormhole in the first place. Thorne dubbed this problem "Polchinskis paradox" in 1994.[7] Later students of the whimsical problem came up with solutions which managed to avoid any inconsistencies, by having the ball emerge from the future at a different angle than the one used to generate the paradox, and deliver its younger self a glancing blow instead of knocking it completely away from the wormhole, a blow which changes its trajectory in just the right way so that it will travel back in time with the angle required to deliver its younger self this glancing blow.[7]

2012 paper on black holesEdit

Main article: Firewall (physics)

In July 2012, Polchinski, together with two of his students — Ahmed Almheiri and Jamie Sully — and fellow string theorist Donald Marolf at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), published a paper[8] whose calculations about black hole radiation seemed to suggest that either general relativitys equivalence principle is wrong, or else a key tenet of quantum mechanics is incorrect.[9]

Bibliography

Polchinski, Joseph (1998a), String Theory Vol. I: An Introduction to the Bosonic String, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-63303-6

Polchinski, Joseph (1998b), String Theory Vol. II: Superstring Theory and Beyond, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-63304-4

References

1.Polchinski, J. (1995). "Dirichlet branes and Ramond-Ramond charges." Physical Review D, 50(10), R6041–R6045.

2.Yang, Henry T. (2 February 2018). "Obituary: Professor Emeritus Joseph Polchinski". UC Santa Barbara.

3."Joe Polchinski (1954-2018): La teoría de cuerdas está de luto". La Ciencia de la Mula Francis (in Spanish). Retrieved 2018-02-03.

http://4.kitp.ucsb.edu Archived 2007-04-17 at the Wayback Machine.

5.ictp.it

6.Leachman, Shelly (December 5, 2016). "Another Major Breakthrough". University of California, Santa Barbara. Retrieved December 5, 2016.

7.Thorne, Kip S. (1994). Black Holes and Time Warps. W. W. Norton. pp. 510–513. ISBN 0-393-31276-3.

8.Almheiri, Ahmed; Marolf, Donald; Polchinski, Joseph; Sully, James (11 February 2013). "Black holes: complementarity or firewalls?". Journal of High Energy Physics. 2013 (2). arXiv:1207.3123?

Freely accessible

. Bibcode:2013JHEP...02..062A. doi:10.1007/JHEP02(2013)062.

9."Astrophysics: Fire in the hole!"