Emmanuel I. Rashba (born October 30, 1927,

Kyiv Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the List of European cities by populat ...

) is a

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

- American theoretical physicist of

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

origin who worked in Ukraine, Russia and in the United States. Rashba is known for his contributions to different areas of

condensed matter physics Condensed matter physics is the field of physics that deals with the macroscopic and microscopic physical properties of matter, especially the solid and liquid phases which arise from electromagnetic forces between atoms. More generally, the s ...

and

spintronics Spintronics (a portmanteau meaning spin transport electronics), also known as spin electronics, is the study of the intrinsic spin of the electron and its associated magnetic moment, in addition to its fundamental electronic charge, in solid-sta ...

, especially the

Rashba effect The Rashba effect, also called Bychkov–Rashba effect, is a momentum-dependent splitting of spin bands in bulk crystalsMore specifically, uniaxial noncentrosymmetric crystals. and low-dimensional condensed matter systems (such as heterostructu ...

in spin physics, and also for the prediction of electric dipole spin resonance (EDSR),E. I. Rashba, Properties of semiconductors with a loop of extrema, I. Cyclotron and combined resonances in a perpendicular field, Sov. Phys. Solid State 2, 1109 (1960). that was widely investigated and became a regular tool for operating electron spins in nanostructures,

phase transition In chemistry, thermodynamics, and other related fields, a phase transition (or phase change) is the physical process of transition between one state of a medium and another. Commonly the term is used to refer to changes among the basic states ...

s in spin-orbit coupled systems driven by change of the

Fermi surface In condensed matter physics, the Fermi surface is the surface in reciprocal space which separates occupied from unoccupied electron states at zero temperature. The shape of the Fermi surface is derived from the periodicity and symmetry of the crys ...

topology,

Giant oscillator strength Giant oscillator strength is inherent in excitons that are weakly bound to impurities or defects in crystals. The spectrum of fundamental absorption of direct-gap semiconductors such as gallium arsenide (GaAs) and cadmium sulfide (CdS) is contin ...

of impurity

exciton An exciton is a bound state of an electron and an electron hole which are attracted to each other by the electrostatic Coulomb force. It is an electrically neutral quasiparticle that exists in insulators, semiconductors and some liquids. Th ...

s, and coexistence of free and self-trapped excitons. The principal subject of spintronics is all-electric operation of electron spins, and EDSR was the first phenomenon predicted and experimentally observed in this field.

Early life

Born in

Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian invas ...

, Rashba survived the Nazi invasion during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

by fleeing with his family to

Kazan Kazan ( ; rus, Казань, p=kɐˈzanʲ; tt-Cyrl, Казан, ''Qazan'', IPA: ɑzan is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Tatarstan in Russia. The city lies at the confluence of the Volga and the Kazanka rivers, covering ...

where he started studying physics at the

Kazan University Kazan (Volga region) Federal University (russian: Казанский (Приволжский) федеральный университет, tt-Cyrl, Казан (Идел буе) федераль университеты) is a public research uni ...

. His father Iosif (Joseph) Rashba was a prominent defence lawyer, a widely educated humanitarian, and his mother Rosalia was a teacher of English. After returning to Kyiv he graduated, with high honors, from the Physics Department of

Kyiv University Kyiv University or Shevchenko University or officially the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv ( uk, Київський національний університет імені Тараса Шевченка), colloquially known as KNU ...

in 1949. His Instructors were

Alexander Davydov Alexander Sergeevich Davydov (russian: Александр Сергеевич Давы́дов, uk, Олекса́ндр Сергі́йович Дави́дов) (26 December 1912 – 19 February 1993) was a Soviet and Ukrainian physicist. Davyd ...

, Solomon Pekar and Kirill Tolpygo.

Career

Rashba' graduation from the university fell onto the last years of

Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...

's reign darkened by extreme national

chauvinism Chauvinism is the unreasonable belief in the superiority or dominance of one's own group or people, who are seen as strong and virtuous, while others are considered weak, unworthy, or inferior. It can be described as a form of extreme patriotism ...

. As a result, he had to change temporary jobs five times during the five following years. During this time he initiated, as applied to dams, theory of gravitational stresses in growing elastic bodies (non-Euclidean grows, in current terminology), and also developed theory of exciton-phonon coupling in molecular crystals. In 1954 Rashba was accepted to the Semiconductor Department of the Institute of Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukraine where he initially worked on the theory of transistors but earned his PhD degree in 1956 on his work on

phonon In physics, a phonon is a collective excitation in a periodic, elastic arrangement of atoms or molecules in condensed matter, specifically in solids and some liquids. A type of quasiparticle, a phonon is an excited state in the quantum mechanical ...

coupling (including prediction of coexistence of free and self-trapped excitons, discovered experimentally two decades later on, based on the concept of self-trapping barrier for excitons essential for current work on Sun energy conversion). When the Institute for Semiconductors of the same Academy was established in 1960, Rashba headed there the Department for Theory of Semiconductor Devices. He earned his Doctor of Sciences degree from the A.F. Ioffe Institute in Leningrad in 1963 for his work on spin-orbit coupling in semiconductors and

spectroscopy of molecular crystals (deducing energy spectra of excitons in pure crystals from optical spectra of mixed crystals, in collaboration with

Vladimir Broude Vladimir Lvovich Broude (December 1, 1924, Moscow, Soviet Union – June 22, 1978, Moscow), was a Soviet and Russian experimental physicist of Jewish descent. His father was a Professor of biochemistry and his mother was a medical doctor. His elde ...

). In collaboration with Solomon Pekar, Rashba introduced a mechanism of spin-orbit interaction in magnetic media originating from the coupling of electron spin to microscopically inhomogeneous magnetic field of magnetic background. In 1966, after the Institute of Theoretical Physics of the Academy of Sciences of USSR (currently the

Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics The L. D. Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics (russian: link=no, Институт теоретической физики имени Л. Д. Ландау (ИТФ)) of the Russian Academy of Sciences is a research institution, located in the s ...

) was established in

Chernogolovka Chernogolovka (russian: Черноголо́вка) is a town in Moscow Oblast, Russia. Center of the town is located some 43 km (27 miles) northeast of the Moscow city limit and 59 km (37 miles) from Red Square. Its population in 2018 ...

(Moscow district), Rashba moved there and served as the head of the Theory of Semiconductors Division and afterwards as a principal scientist until 1997. During 1967-1991, Rashba also served as a professor of physics at the

Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT; russian: Московский Физико-Технический институт, also known as PhysTech), is a public university, public research university located in Moscow Oblast, Russia. I ...

( MIPT). In 1991 Rashba moved to the United States, where he worked as a research scholar at the

University of Utah The University of Utah (U of U, UofU, or simply The U) is a public research university in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is the flagship institution of the Utah System of Higher Education. The university was established in 1850 as the University of D ...

(1992–1999), SUNY at Buffalo (2001–2004), and

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 high ...

(2004–2015). He was also associated with

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern t ...

(MIT, 2000–2004), served as an adjunct professor at

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native ...

(2000–2003) and as a Rutherford Professor at the

Loughborough University Loughborough University (abbreviated as ''Lough'' or ''Lboro'' for post-nominals) is a public research university in the market town of Loughborough, Leicestershire, England. It has been a university since 1966, but it dates back to 1909, whe ...

(2007–2010). During this period Rashba worked mostly on spintronics and physics of

nanosystems ThTechnology Roadmap for Productive Nanosystemsdefines "productive nanosystems" as functional nanoscale systems that make atomically-specified structures and devices under programmatic control, i.e., they perform atomically precise manufacturing ...

. After Rashba's severe neurological disease (1997) his work was facilitated by his wife Erna and the family of his daughter. For about 15 years Rashba served as a member of the editorial boards of the journals '' JETP Letters'' and '' Journal of Luminescence''.

Recognitions

Rashba is a Fellow of the American Physical Society. Among his recognitions are 1966 National Prize of the USSR and the International Conference on Luminescence ICL'99 Prize for his work on optical spectroscopy,

Ioffe Ioffe is a Jewish surname. Notable people with the surname include: *Abram Ioffe (1880–1960), Ukraine-born Soviet physicist * Dmitry Ioffe (1963–2020), Israeli mathematician *Julia Ioffe (born 1982), Russian-born American journalist * Mikhail I ...

(1987, USSR), Pekar (2007, Ukraine), Doctor of Honoris Causa of Bogolyubov Institute for Theoretical Physics (2022, Ukraine), and Oliver Buckley (2022, US) Prizes for his work on spin-related phenomena, and 2005 Sir Nevill Mott (UK) and 2005 Arkady Aronov (Israel) Lectureships. Rashba's name became a part of a number of technical terms such as ''Rashba Hamiltonian'', ''giant Rashba'' systems, ''Rashba physics'', etc., which are parts of the titles of about 4000 scientific papers. According to Google Scholar, paper Ref. is the most cited and Ref.Yu. A. Bychkov and E. I. Rashba, Properties of a 2D electron gas with lifted spectrum degeneracy, JETP Lett. 39, 78 (1984) http://jetpletters.ru/ps/1264/article_19121.pdf is the second most cited of the papers published in these journals, respectively.

References

External links

Pioneer in spintronics celebrates birthday, Harvard Gazette, 6 March 2008
*

Institute of Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine The Institute of Physics (IOP) of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine ( uk, Інститут фізики Національної академії наук України) founded in 1926 is the oldest research institution of physical sc ...

Page of the V. Ye. Lashkaryov Institute of Semiconductor Physics of NAS of Ukraine
* http://isp.kiev.ua/index.php/uk/history-menu-ukr/912-2013-05-29-12-42-40/history/5001-2014-09-05-11-48-46 (in Russian: V. E. Lashkaryov Institute for Physics of Semiconductors, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine) *

* http://www.fz-juelich.de/SharedDocs/Termine/PGI/PGI-1/EN/2010/d_term_2010-01-06.html;jsessionid=F8A3F7919770C907930BD4CC3BC4B105?nn=1328342, Wilhelm and Else Heraeus Seminar:"Rashba and related spin-orbit effects in metals" (Germany, January 2010) * https://web.archive.org/web/20070717135437/http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ph/staff/eir.html, Department of Physics, Loughborough University * https://www.physics.harvard.edu/node/549http * http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2011/aug/17/rashba-gets-hotter-and-more-pronounced * https://physicsworld.com/a/breathing-new-life-into-the-rashba-effect/ * News and views from the Journal of Physics series, http://jphysplus.iop.org/2015/06/05/restoring-the-scientific-record/ * Jews in Physics, Jinfo.org, http://www.jinfo.org/

Early life

Career

Recognitions

See also

References

External links

Further reading