Ter-Martirosyan, Karen Avetikovich

Karen Avetovich Ter-Martirosyan was born in Tiflis (Tbilisi) in an Armenian family. In 1943 he graduated from Tbilisi State University , in 1945 he entered the graduate school of the Leningrad Physical-Technical Institute (LFTI).

There, under the leadership of Jacob Ilyich Frenkel in 1949, he defended his Ph.D. thesis and began working in the theoretical department of the Physicotechnical Institute. Already at the very beginning of his scientific career, Karen Avetovich obtained outstanding results in the field of nuclear physics for three years working at LFTI ^[2] .

In 1952, Ter-Martirosyan constructed a theory of the Coulomb excitation of atomic nuclei, on the basis of which the non-sphericity of a number of heavy nuclei was experimentally discovered. In 1968, these works were awarded the State Prize.

In 1952-1954 Karen Avetovich solved the three-body quantum-mechanical problem for zero-range forces. The equation obtained by him (several years later generalized by LD Fadeev for potentials of a finite radius) was included in the world literature under the name of the Skornyakov – Ter-Martirosyan equation .

A new flourishing of Karen Avetovich’s scientific activities began in 1955 after his transfer to the Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics (ITEP) in Moscow, where in 1957 he defended his doctoral thesis. At ITEP, his research interests under the influence of L. D. Landau and I. Ya. Pomeranchuk shifted towards field theory and elementary particle physics .

Together with I. T. Dyatlov and V. V. Sudakov, he solved the system of “parquet” equations of quantum electrodynamics — a problem that Landau considered to be unsolvable. Karen Avetovich was most famous for his classic results in the theory of strong interactions at high energies . Together with V.N. Gribov and I.Ya. Pomeranchuk, he created a theory of branch points in the plane of the complex angular momentum, investigated processes with multiregional kinematics, gave a theoretical description of the growing sections, and constructed a theory of the critical and supercritical pomeron .

Later, he constructed a theory of the distribution of hadrons in multiplicity at high energies. On its basis, the theory of particle production in hadron-hadron and hadron-nuclear collisions at high energies was developed. This theory is still the main phenomenological approach to the description of hadron interactions at high energy, naturally combining with the range of ideas of quantum chromodynamics ^[2] .

Karen Avetovich was the founder and for 35 years was the permanent head of the department of particle physics at MIPT . Hundreds of young physicists passed through his hands, becoming specialists not only in the field of nuclear physics and elementary particles, but also in other fields of science.

Karen Avetovich's many years of ascetic pedagogical activity and the brightness of his creative individuality led to the creation of a unique scientific school of theoretical physics.

In 2000, he was elected Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences .

Bibliography

• Voloshin MB , Ter-Martirosyan KA Theory of gauge interactions of elementary particles. - M., 1984.

• Order of the Red Banner of Labor ^[3]
• USSR State Prize (1968).
• Pomeranchuk Prize "... for a fundamental contribution to quantum mechanics and quantum field theory" (1999).

• Abov Yu. G. , A. F. Andreev , M. I. Vysotsky , M. V. Danilov , I. M. Dremin, B. L. Ioffe , A. B. Kaidalov , O. V. Kancheli, L. B. Okun , Yu. A. Simonov, A. N. Skrinsky , B. Yu. Sharkov. In memory of Karen Avetovich Ter-Martirosyan // Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk , 176, 909–910 (2006)
• Abov Yu. G. , Boreskov K. G., Vladimirsky V. V., Danilov M. V., Danilyan G. V., Dyatlov I. T., Ioffe B. L. , Kaidalov A. B. , Kancheli O V., Okun 'L. B. , Simonov Yu. A., Suvorov A. L. Karen Avetovich Ter-Martirosyan (on his eightieth birthday) // Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk , 172, 1111–1112 (2002)

• Karen Avetikovich Ter-Martirosyan profile on the official website of the Russian Academy of Sciences