Alexander V. Balatsky

Alexander V. Balatsky (born 19 October 1961) is a USSR-born American physicist. He is the professor of theoretical physics at NORDITA and University of Connecticut. He served as the founding director of the Institute for Materials Science (IMS) at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 2014–2017.

Alexander V. Balatsky
Balatsky
Born1961
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

Biography

Born in Pushkin, USSR he was educated in Russia, being made Master of Science at Moscow Physical-Technology Institute in 1984 and Doctor of Philosophy at the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics in 1987. He moved to the United States in 1989 as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Illinois in 1989–1990 after which he was appointed a research assistant professor position at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. He then moved 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)[1] and building an active theory program at CINT.

In 2011 Balatsky was appointed as a professor of theoretical condensed matter physics at Nordita in Stockholm.[2] In 2014 he returned to the US to become Director of the new Institute for Functional Materials at Los Alamos.

Work

Balatsky is known for his contributions to the theory of High-temperature superconductivity,[3] and mechanism of superconducting paring known as Spin Fluctuation Theory.[4][5]

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[6][7] as an alternative explanation of supersolidity seen in torsional oscillator experiments,[8][9] on theory of Heavy Fermions,[10] and on electronic and structural properties of DNA and Graphene hybrid structures[11][12]

Balatsky and collaborators predicted the existence of the impurity induced resonances in d-wave superconductors that can serve as markers of unconventional superconductivity,[13] and Impurity-induced states in conventional and unconventional superconductors.[14]

He also proposed the notion of Dirac Materials[15] as a unifying class of materials that exhibit Dirac like excitations.

Honors and awards

He was elected as a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2003,[16] and Los Alamos Fellow[17] in 2005. In Nov 2011, he was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow[18]

References
  1. "CINT – Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies". cint.lanl.gov.
  2. Mühlen, Hans. "Alexander Balatsky – NORDITA". www.nordita.org. Retrieved 2018-01-03.
  3. "Physics Today: Vol 53, No 3".
  4. 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. Bibcode:1992PhRvB..4614803M. doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.46.14803. PMID 10003579.
  5. Mann, Adam (2011). "High-temperature superconductivity at 25: Still in suspense". Nature. 475 (7356): 280–282. Bibcode:2011Natur.475..280M. doi:10.1038/475280a. PMID 21776057.
  6. 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 (5–6): 388–421. arXiv:1209.0803. Bibcode:2013JLTP..172..388B. doi:10.1007/s10909-012-0766-5. S2CID 118569677.
  7. 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. arXiv:1110.0841. Bibcode:2012PMagL..92..608Z. doi:10.1080/09500839.2012.704415. S2CID 119193326.
  8. "Study Casts New Light on 'Supersolid' Effects in Helium-4 | the Kavli Foundation".
  9. "Supersolid helium unlikely".
  10. "First images of heavy electrons in action: Characteristics of 'hidden order' in unusual uranium compound".
  11. "Alexander Balatsky: DNA Electronic Fingerprints by Local Spectroscopy on Graphene – Carbonhagen2013".
  12. "APS -APS March Meeting 2013 – Session Index MAR13".
  13. Balatsky, A. V.; Graf, M. J.; Nussinov, Z.; Su, J. -J. (2004). "Impurity-induced states in conventional and unconventional superconductors". arXiv:cond-mat/0411318.
  14. A. V. Balatsky; I. Vekhter; Jian-Xin Zhu (2006). "Impurity-induced states in conventional and unconventional superconductors". Rev. Mod. Phys. 78 (2): 373–433. arXiv:cond-mat/0411318. Bibcode:2006RvMP...78..373B. doi:10.1103/RevModPhys.78.373. S2CID 119523494.
  15. Wehling, T.O; Black-Schaffer, A.M; Balatsky, A.V (2014). "Dirac materials". Advances in Physics. 63 (1): 1. arXiv:1405.5774. Bibcode:2014AdPhy..63....1W. doi:10.1080/00018732.2014.927109. S2CID 118557449.
  16. "APS Fellow Archive".
  17. "Fellows Biographies".
  18. ""AAAS Fellows"". Archived from the original on 2014-06-27. Retrieved 2014-06-27.
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