Lance Jenkins Dixon (born 22 June 1961, in

Pasadena, California Pasadena ( ) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is the most populous city and the primary cultural center of the San Gabriel Valley. Old Pasadena is the city's original commercial district. I ...

) is an American theoretical particle physicist. He is a professor in the

SLAC Theory Group The SLAC Theory Group is the hub of theoretical particle physics research at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford University. It is a subdivision of the Particle physics, Elementary Particle Physics (EPP) Division at SLAC. Resea ...

at the

Stanford Linear Accelerator Center SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, originally named the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, is a United States Department of Energy National Laboratory operated by Stanford University under the programmatic direction of the U.S. Departme ...

(SLAC) at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

. Dixon received in 1982 his B.S. in physics and applied mathematics from

Caltech The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...

and received in 1986 his doctorate 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 ...

. As a

postdoc A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). The ultimate goal of a postdoctoral research position is to p ...

he was at SLAC. From 1987 he was assistant professor at Princeton University, from 1989 he was a Panofsky Fellow at the SLAC and in 1992 he became an associate professor and in 1998 a full professor at SLAC. He has been a visiting professor at the

École normale supérieure École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, Savoi ...

and the

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

( Clare Hall). Starting in the 1990s Dixon developed, with

Zvi Bern Zvi Bern (born 17 September 1960) is an American theoretical particle physicist. He is a professor at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Bern studied physics and mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and earned his do ...

and others, new methods (''generalized unitarity methods'' among others) for the calculation of

Feynman diagram In theoretical physics, a Feynman diagram is a pictorial representation of the mathematical expressions describing the behavior and interaction of subatomic particles. The scheme is named after American physicist Richard Feynman, who introduc ...

s in

quantum chromodynamics In theoretical physics, quantum chromodynamics (QCD) is the theory of the strong interaction between quarks mediated by gluons. Quarks are fundamental particles that make up composite hadrons such as the proton, neutron and pion. QCD is a type ...

(QCD) and other Yang–Mills theories. These new methods became more relevant with the requirements of the

Large Hadron Collider The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle collider. It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008 in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists and hundred ...

calculations in the 2000s and also provided new insights into the divergences in the

supergravity In theoretical physics, supergravity (supergravity theory; SUGRA for short) is a modern field theory that combines the principles of supersymmetry and general relativity; this is in contrast to non-gravitational supersymmetric theories such as ...

perturbation series. In 2014, with

and David Kosower, Dixon received the

Sakurai Prize The J. J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics, is presented by the American Physical Society at its annual April Meeting, and honors outstanding achievement in particle physics theory. The prize consists of a monetary award ($10,000 U ...

for "pathbreaking contributions to the calculation of perturbative scattering amplitudes, which led to a deeper understanding of quantum field theory and to powerful new tools for computing

QCD In theoretical physics, quantum chromodynamics (QCD) is the theory of the strong interaction between quarks mediated by gluons. Quarks are fundamental particles that make up composite hadrons such as the proton, neutron and pion. QCD is a type o ...

processes." His 1991 publication with Vadim S. Kaplunovsky and Jan Louis has over 800 citations. In 1995 Dixon was elected a Fellow of the

American Physical Society The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of k ...

. He was elected a member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

in 2022.

Selected publications

* Dixo
"Calculating scattering amplitudes efficiently"
TASI Lectures 1996 * Dixo
"UV Behavior of N = 8 Supergravity"
Erice School 2009 * Bern, Dixon, Kosower "Quantum Gravity Particles may resemble ordinary particles of force2", ''Scientific American'', May 2012 * Bern, Dixon, Kosowe
"On-shell methods in perturbative QCD"
''Annals of Physics'', 322, 2007, 1587–1634 * Bern, Dixon, Kosowe
"Progress in 1 loop QCD calculations"
''Annual Review Nuclear Particle Physics'', 46, 1996, 109–148

Awards, honors

* Fellow, American Physical Society, 1995 * Fellow, National Academy of Sciences, 2022 * Galileo Galilei Medal, 2023

References

External links

Homepage at SLAC
* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Dixon, Lance J California Institute of Technology alumni Princeton University alumni Stanford University faculty Fellows of the American Physical Society Particle physicists 21st-century American physicists J. J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics recipients 1961 births Living people Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences