Antti Kupiainen (born 23 June 1954,
Varkaus
Varkaus (before year 1929 ''Warkaus'') is a Middle- Savonian industrial town and municipality of Finland. It is located in the province of Eastern Finland and is part of the Northern Savonia region, between city of Kuopio and town of Savonlinna.
T ...
,
Finland
Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...
) is a Finnish
mathematical physicist
Mathematical physics refers to the development of mathematical methods for application to problems in physics. The ''Journal of Mathematical Physics'' defines the field as "the application of mathematics to problems in physics and the developmen ...
.
Education and career
Kupiainen completed his undergraduate education in 1976 at the Technical University of Helsinki and received his Ph.D. in 1979 from
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...
under
Thomas C. Spencer (and
Barry Simon
Barry Martin Simon (born 16 April 1946) is an American mathematical physicist and was the IBM professor of Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Caltech, known for his prolific contributions in spectral theory, functional analysis, and no ...
) with thesis ''Some rigorous results on the 1/n expansion''. As a postdoc he spent the academic year 1979/80 at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
and then did research at the University of Helsinki. He became a professor of mathematics in 1989 at
Rutgers University
Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's ...
and in 1991 at the University of Helsinki.
In 1984/85 he was the Loeb Lecturer at Harvard. He was several times a visiting scholar at the
Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholar ...
. He was a visiting professor at a number of institutions, including
IHES,
University of California, Santa Barbara
The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Barbara County, California, Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduate ...
,
MSRI,
Ăcole normale supĂ©rieure
Ăcole may refer to:
* an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collÚge and lycée)
* Ăcole (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in rĂ©gion Ăle-de-France
* Ăcole, Savoi ...
, and
Institut Henri Poincaré
The Henri Poincaré Institute (or IHP for ''Institut Henri Poincaré'') is a mathematics research institute part of Sorbonne University, in association with the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS). It is located in the 5th arrond ...
. He was twice an
invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians
This is a list of International Congresses of Mathematicians Plenary and Invited Speakers. Being invited to talk at an International Congress of Mathematicians has been called "the equivalent, in this community, of an induction to a hall of fame." ...
; his ICM talks were in 1990 at Kyoto on ''Renormalization group and random systems'' and in 2010 at Hyderabad on ''Origins of Diffusion''.
From 2012 to 2014 he was the president of the
International Association of Mathematical Physics
The International Association of Mathematical Physics (IAMP) was founded in 1976 to promote research in mathematical physics. It brings together research mathematicians and theoretical physicists, including students. The association's ordinary memb ...
. From 1997 to 2010 he was on the editorial board of ''Communications in Mathematical Physics''. In 2010 he received the Science Award of the city of Helsinki. He received an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) for 2009â2014.
Research
Kupiainen works on
constructive quantum field theory
In mathematical physics, constructive quantum field theory is the field devoted to showing that quantum field theory can be defined in terms of precise mathematical structures. This demonstration requires new mathematics, in a sense analogous t ...
and
statistical mechanics
In physics, statistical mechanics is a mathematical framework that applies statistical methods and probability theory to large assemblies of microscopic entities. It does not assume or postulate any natural laws, but explains the macroscopic be ...
. In the 1980s he developed, with
Krzysztof Gawedzki, a
renormalization group
In theoretical physics, the term renormalization group (RG) refers to a formal apparatus that allows systematic investigation of the changes of a physical system as viewed at different scales. In particle physics, it reflects the changes in the ...
method (RG) for mathematical analysis of field theories and phase transitions for spin systems on lattices. In addition in the 1980s he and Gawedzki did research on
conformal field theories
A conformal field theory (CFT) is a quantum field theory that is invariant under conformal transformations. In two dimensions, there is an infinite-dimensional algebra of local conformal transformations, and conformal field theories can sometime ...
, in particular the
WZW (Wess-Zumino-Witten) model. Then he was involved in applications of the RG method to other problems in probability theory, the theory of partial differential equations (for example, pattern formation, blow up, and moving fronts in asymptotic solutions of nonlinear parabolic differential equations), and dynamical systems (''e.g.''
KAM theory
Kaam (Gurmukhi: àšàšŸàšź ''KÄma'') in common usage, the term stands for 'excessive passion for sexual pleasure' and it is in this sense that it is considered to be an evil in Sikhism.
In Sikhism it is believed that Kaam can be overcome ...
).
As an application of RG in probability theory, Kupiainen and
Jean Bricmont
Jean Bricmont (; born 12 April 1952) is a Belgian theoretical physicist and philosopher of science. Professor at the Catholic University of Louvain (UCLouvain), he works on renormalization group and nonlinear differential equations. Since 2004, ...
showed that the random walk with asymmetric random transition probabilities in three or more spatial dimensions leads to diffusion (and therefore time-irreversible behavior). Kupiainen continued his investigations into the origins of diffusion and time-irreversibility in various model systems (such as coupled chaotic mappings and weakly coupled anharmonic oscillations).
He also did research on the turbulent flow problem in hydrodynamic models. With Gawedzki, he established "anomalous inertial range scaling of the structure functions for a model of homogeneous, isotropic advection of a passive scalar by a random vector field." (Kolmogorov's theory of homogeneous turbulence breaks down for a particular model.)
In 1996 Kupiainen and Bricmont applied high temperature methods from statistical mechanics to chaotic dynamical systems.
References
External links
Kupiainen's homepage at the University of Helsinki*
ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLn_50Tpdf8&t=2937s An Introduction to Liouville Theory, Talk at Institute for Advanced Study, may 2018
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kupiainen, Antti
1954 births
Living people
20th-century Finnish mathematicians
21st-century Finnish mathematicians
20th-century Finnish physicists
21st-century Finnish physicists
Institute for Advanced Study visiting scholars
Princeton University alumni
Rutgers University faculty
Academic personnel of the University of Helsinki
Presidents of the International Association of Mathematical Physics