Science at the Shine Dome 2010

New Fellows Seminar

Wednesday 5 May

Professor Vladimir Bazhanov FAA  
Department of Theoretical Physics, Australian National University

Vladimir Bazhanov obtained an MSc in physics in 1974 from the Moscow State University and a PhD in theoretical and mathematical physics in 1979 from the Institute for High Energy Physics (IHEP), Protvino – Russia’s largest particle accelerator centre. He worked at IHEP as a senior research scientist, specialising in quantum electrodynamics, quantum field theory and statistical mechanics. In 1990 he moved to Australia and joined the School of Mathematical Sciences and then the Research School of Physics and Engineering at the Australian National University. He was head of the Department of Theoretical Physics at the ANU from 2001 to 2005 and held numerous visiting professor positions at overseas universities. He has made pioneering contributions in the field of exactly solvable models of quantum field theory and statistical mechanics.

Exact solutions: Past, present and future

In physics, an exact solution is a concise and complete mathematical description of the problem without using an approximation. Of course, not every physical problem can be solved exactly but, remarkably, it looks as though some of the most fundamental problems which determine our being are indeed exactly solvable (eg, the Kepler problem of planetary motion and the hydrogen atom in quantum mechanics). Intensive development of the theory of exactly solvable systems with a large or even infinite number of degrees of freedom started in the 1970s after the discovery of the Yang-Baxter equations. I will briefly describe the importance of this theory in physics and mathematics and outline prospects for future developments and applications.