Biography:Alexander V. Balatsky

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Alexander V. Balatsky
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Alexander Balatsky
Born
Pushkin, USSR
Alma materLandau Institute
AwardsAAAS Fellow, APS Fellow, Los Alamos Fellow
Scientific career
FieldsPhysics, Condensed Matter Theory
InstitutionsLos Alamos National Laboratory, NORDITA, KTH Royal Institute of Technology
Doctoral advisorM. Feigelman, V.P. Mineev and G.E. Volovik at Landau Institute, David Pines at UIUC

Alexander V. Balatsky is an USSR born United States physicist, the director of the Institute for Materials Science (IMS) at Los Alamos National Laboratory. In 2011 Balatsky was appointed as a professor of theoretical condensed matter physics at Nordita.[1]

Biography

Balatsky obtained his doctoral degree from the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics. After postdoctoral training and a research assistant professor position at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, he came to Los Alamos National Laboratory as an Oppenheimer Fellow. As an acting chief scientist and as a theory thrust leader he was actively involved in bringing up the Center of Integrated Nanotechnology (CINT)[2] and building an active theory program at CINT.[3] In 2014 Balatsky became a Director of new Institute for Functional Materials at Los Alamos. He was elected as a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2003,[4] and Los Alamos Fellow[5] in 2005. In Nov 2011, he was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow[6]

Work

Balatsky is known for his contributions to the theory of High-temperature superconductivity,[7] and mechanism of superconducting paring known as Spin Fluctuation Theory.[8][9]

According to this theory, the pairing wave function of the cuprate HTS should have a dx2-y2 symmetry. The same spin fluctuation mechanism is likely responsible for the superconducting pairing in Heavy fermion superconductors and in Fe based superconductors. Balatsky recently worked on anomalous mechanical properties of solid He4[10][11] as an alternative explanation of supersolidity seen in torsional oscillator experiments,[12][13] on theory of Heavy Fermions,[14][15] and on electronic and structural properties of DNA and Graphene hybrid structures[16][17]

Balatsky and collaborators predicted the existence of the impurity induced resonances in d-wave superconductors that can serve as markers of unconventional superconductivity,[18] and Impurity-induced states in conventional and unconventional superconductors.[19]

He also proposed the notion of Dirac Materials[20] as a unifying class of materials that exhibit Dirac like excitations.

References

  1. Mühlen, Hans. "Alexander Balatsky - NORDITA" (in en). https://www.nordita.org/people/staff/index.php?u=alexander.balatsky. 
  2. http://www.cint.lanl.gov/
  3. http://www.cint.lanl.gov/source/orgs/mpa/cint/alexander_balatsky.shtml#
  4. http://www.aps.org/programs/honors/fellowships/archive-all.cfm?initial=&year=2003&unit_id=&institution=
  5. http://www.lanl.gov/collaboration/fellows/fellows-biographies.php
  6. http://membercentral.aaas.org/fellows?page=7
  7. http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/magazine/physicstoday/53/3
  8. P. Monthoux; A. V. Balatsky; D. Pines (1992). "Weak-coupling theory of high-temperature superconductivity in the antiferromagnetically correlated copper oxides". Physical Review B 46 (22): 14803–14817. doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.46.14803. Bibcode1992PhRvB..4614803M. 
  9. http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110720/full/475280a.html
  10. A. V. Balatsky; M. J. Graf; Z. Nussinov; J.-J. Su (2013). "Defects and glassy dynamics in solid He-4: Perspectives and current status". J Low Temp Phys 172: 388–421. doi:10.1007/s10909-012-0766-5. Bibcode2013JLTP..172..388B. 
  11. C Zhou; J Su; MJ Graf; C Reichhardt; AV Balatsky; IJ Beyerlein (2012). "Dislocation-induced anomalous softening of solid helium". Philosophical Magazine Letters 92 (11): 608–616. doi:10.1080/09500839.2012.704415. Bibcode2012PMagL..92..608Z. 
  12. http://www.kavlifoundation.org/kavli-news/cornell-supersolid-effects-helium-4
  13. http://phys.org/news/2011-05-supersolid-helium.html
  14. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100602131342.htm
  15. http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/pubaf/pr/photos/2010/05/NRHiddenOrderNatureFINALLANL.pdf
  16. https://sites.google.com/a/carbonhagen.com/carbonhagen2013/abstracts/alexanderbalatskydnaelectronicfingerprintsbylocalspectroscopyongraphene
  17. http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR13/SessionIndex3/?SessionEventID=191202
  18. http://lanl.arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0411318
  19. A. V. Balatsky; I. Vekhter; Jian-Xin Zhu (2006). "Impurity-induced states in conventional and unconventional superconductors". Rev. Mod. Phys. 78: 373. doi:10.1103/RevModPhys.78.373. Bibcode2006RvMP...78..373B. 
  20. Wehling, T.O; Black-Schaffer, A.M; Balatsky, A.V (2014). "Dirac materials". Advances in Physics 63: 1. doi:10.1080/00018732.2014.927109.