Grigory E. Volovik facts for kids

Grigory Efimovich Volovik (born September 7, 1946, in Moscow) is a Russian scientist who studies physics. He is known for his work on how matter behaves, especially at very cold temperatures. This field is called condensed matter physics. He is famous for something called the Volovik effect.

He has done a lot of important research on strange materials like superfluids and superconductors.

His Journey in Science

Grigory Volovik finished his first degree in 1970 at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. After that, he became a student at the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics in Moscow. He earned his Ph.D. there in 1973. His Ph.D. work was about how tiny particles move in a special kind of system.

Since 1973, he has worked at the Landau Institute. In 1993, he also started teaching as a professor at the Helsinki University of Technology (now called Aalto University) in Finland. In 1981, he earned another high degree, similar to a second Ph.D., from the Landau Institute. This work was about "Topology of defects in condensed matter," which means studying the "twists" or "knots" in materials.

Professor Volovik has written or helped write over 450 science papers!

Awards and Recognition

Grigory Volovik has received many important awards for his work:

• In 1992, he won the Landau Gold Medal.
• In 2004, he received the Simon Memorial Prize. This award was for his amazing research on how symmetry affects superfluids and superconductors. He also showed how these ideas could be used in other areas like how the universe began and how tiny particles behave.
• In 2014, he shared the Lars Onsager Prize with Vladimir Petrovich Mineev. They won for their work on classifying "topological defects" in materials. They even predicted special "half-quantum vortices" in a super-cold liquid called superfluid He-3.

Because of his important contributions, he was chosen as a foreign member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters in 2001. In 2007, he became a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.

Exploring the Universe in Materials

Volovik's research explores many fascinating topics. He studies very cold quantum spin liquids, like liquid helium. He also looks at superfluids, which are liquids that flow without any friction. He investigates special kinds of superconductors and how glasses and liquid crystals behave. He also studies "quantum turbulence," which is like tiny whirlpools in quantum liquids.

One of his most exciting ideas is finding similarities between how the universe works and how materials behave. He believes that by studying materials, we can learn about big mysteries in the universe. For example, he suggested a way to understand the "cosmological constant problem." This is a big puzzle about why the universe is expanding the way it is. He thinks that ideas from solid-state physics might help solve it.

In 2010, he wrote a book with Frans R. Klinkhamer called Towards a solution of the cosmological constant problem.

Volovik worked with an experimental scientist named Yuri Mikhailovich Bunkov. They studied how liquid helium-3 can act like a tiny model of the universe's vacuum. In this model, tiny particles and forces (like photons and gravitons) appear as "emergent" laws. This means these laws show up when many simple parts come together, even if they aren't obvious in the individual parts.

Volovik's ideas about gravity appearing from the vacuum are similar to a theory by Andrei Sakharov in Russia. He suggests that at high energies, materials lose their symmetry. But at very low temperatures, in a superfluid state, new symmetries appear. These new symmetries are similar to the fundamental symmetries we see in the Standard Model of particle physics. Volovik calls this idea "anti-GUT."

He also studied "many-body problems" by looking at them as "topological defects." In 2007, he suggested that gravity itself might be an "emergent" phenomenon. This means it could arise from a stable "defect" in the way particles move. He also researched the "topological invariants" of the Standard Model. These are properties that don't change even when things are stretched or bent. He also looked at "quantum phase transitions" between different vacuum states of the Standard Model.

In the early 2000s, he was part of a group that guided a program called Cosmology in the Laboratory (COSLAB).

Books He Wrote

• The Universe in a Helium Droplet. This book was published in 2003 and has been cited over 3000 times!
• Exotic properties of superfluid ³He. Published in 1992.
• With Mário Novello and Matt Visser (editors): Artificial Black Holes. Published in 2002. Volovik wrote a chapter in this book called Effective Gravity and quantum vacuum in superfluids.
• With R. Huebener and N. Schopohl (editors): Vortices in unconventional superconductors and superfluids. Published in 2002. Volovik wrote an introduction for this book called The beautiful world of the vortex.

See also

In Spanish: Grigory E. Volovik para niños