Dr. Mikhail Shifman
Theoretical Physics Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA
FEATURED AUTHOR
SCHOLARPEDIA ARTICLES
Novikov-Shifman-Vainshtein-
Zakharov beta function
Scholarpedia, 7(3):9727.
Shifman-Vainshtein-Zakharov
sum rules
Scholarpedia, 8(11):8790.
Mikhail Shifman
Dr. Mikhail Shifman (b. April 4, 1949, Riga, Latvia) is the Ida Cohen Fine Chair in Theoretical Physics at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA. He is well-known for a variety of fundamental contributions to quantum chromodynamics (QCD) and supersymmetric gauge theories. He was awarded the Sakurai Prize (1999) and the Pomeranchuk Prize (2013).
Dr. Shifman graduated with honors from Moscow Institute for Physics and Technology in 1972, and obtained his PhD at the Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics (ITEP) in 1976. He worked in ITEP from 1975 to 1990, and became a professor in 1983. During 1989-1990, he was a visiting professor of the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the Bern University. He then joined the faculty of the William I. Fine Theoretical Physics Institute at the University of Minnesota as a permanent member in 1990.
Dr. Shifman's research interests are QCD sum rules, heavy quark theory, supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory, and supersymmetric gauge dynamics at strong coupling. He started his career by the pioneering studies (1974-1976) on the penguin mechanism of flavor-changing weak decays during his PhD life. In 1979, he proposed the sum rules relating the properties of low-lying hadronic states to the vacuum condensates, known as the Shifman-Vainshtein-Zakharov sum rules. As a solution to the strong CP problem, he introduced the invisible axion in 1980. During 1983-1991, he made several groundbreaking discoveries on the supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories, including the Novikov-Shifman-Vainshtein-Zakharov beta function and a solution of the anomaly puzzle. In the field of hadronic physics, he introduced the heavy quark symmetry (1986-1988), formulated the foundations of the heavy quark expanion and worked out the theory of inclusive heavy flavor decays (1985-1995). After 1999, his main research covered supersymmetric solitons, supersymmetric gluodynamics, and the orientifold field theory.
Dr. Shifman has received several awards and honors during his illustrious career including the Alexander-von-Humboldt Award in 1993, the Research Award of Japan Society for Promotion of Science in 1993 and 1996, the J.J. Sakurai Prize in 1999, the Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize in 2006, and the Pomeranchuk Prize in 2013. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the 2007 laureate of the Blaise Pascal Chair.
For more information about Dr. Shifman, see http://www.ftpi.umn.edu/shifman/.
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