THE NOBEL PRIZES IN PHYSICS 2008

Yoichiro Nambu (win 0.5 of prize) 

Y. Nambu

Lahir di Prefektur Fukui, 18 January 1921, umur 87 tahun, adalah fisikawan kelahiran Jepang berwarganegaraan Amerika Serikat. Selain menjadi perintis riset kromodinamika kuantum dan Higgs Boson pada tahun 1960-an, ia juga perintis teori dawai.Ia memperoleh penghargaan Nobel Fisika tahun 2008 untuk “perusakan kesetangkupan serta-merta” dalam fisika subatom.

Penghargaan yang pernah diterima : Penghargaan Wolf, Penghargaan Dirac, Penghargaan Sakurai, dan Penghargaan Nobel Fisika 2008.

Artikel lain tentang Yochiro Nambu dalam bahasa Inggris

Sc.D., Tokyo, Japan, 1952.
Harry Pratt Judson Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus, Dept. of Physics and Enrico Fermi Institute.
Theoretical physics, particle physics, field theory.

I have always been interested in the problem of mass hierarchy of particles. In this connection I have been exploring certain new aspects of spontaneous symmetry breaking. In 2002 I discovered a theorem on an anomaly in the number and the properties of Nambu-Goldstone bosons. This has led me to speculate on the possible violations of Lorentz invariance in free space. I also found that such “quasiparticles”, when regarded as classical particles, have peculiar non-Newtonian behavior that the effective mass can go negative (v and p in opposite directions) in a certain range of momentum, and the initial position and velocity of a particle do not uniquely determine its motion. In a more recent development, I have found a formulation of the so-called BEC-BCS crossover phenomenon, and I am looking into its general implications in physics.

Hagedorn-Rumer phenomena. It is well known in hadron multiple production (according to the so-called Hagedorn fireball model) as well as in string theory that the density of states increases exponentially with energy and competes with the Boltzmann factor so that thermodynamic equilibrium cannot be maintained above a certain limiting temperature. I have been interested in this as part of my search for phenomena that defy thermodynamics. The entropy of the black hole is of a similar but more drastic nature, and has been the subject of intense study in string theory lately. In classical physics I have found two simple examples of exponential density of states. One is a particle in a logarithmic potential, which had already been pointed out by Y. Rumer in 1960. The other is a particle under gravity and placed in a vessel whose horizontal cross section grows exponentially upwards. I suspect this is a rather general phenomenon which might eventually become relevant to biology as well as cosmological problems.

Makoto Kobayashi (win 0.25 of prize) 

kobayashi

Toshihide Maskawa (win 0.25 of prize)

maskawa