Mikhail (Michel) Dyakonov (born 1940 in
Leningrad
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
) is a Russian professor of physics at Laboratoire Charles Coulomb (L2C),
Université Montpellier
The University of Montpellier (french: Université de Montpellier) is a public research university located in Montpellier, in south-east of France. Established in 1220, the University of Montpellier is one of the oldest universities in the wo ...
- CNRS in
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
.
Career
His name is connected with several physical phenomena: Dyakonov–Perel spin relaxation mechanism, Dyakonov–Shur plasma wave instability. In 1971, together with V.I. Perel he predicted the Spin Hall Effect, which has become a field of intense studies.
He theoretically predicted a new class of
surface electromagnetic wave
In physics, a surface wave is a mechanical wave that propagates along the interface between differing media. A common example is gravity waves along the surface of liquids, such as ocean waves. Gravity waves can also occur within liquids, at t ...
s, now called
Dyakonov surface waves Dyakonov surface waves (DSWs) are surface electromagnetic waves that travel along the interface in between an isotropic and an uniaxial-birefringent medium. They were theoretically predicted in 1988 by the Russian physicist Mikhail Dyakonov. Unlik ...
(DSWs) in 1988. Unlike other types of
acoustic and
electromagnetic
In physics, electromagnetism is an interaction that occurs between particles with electric charge. It is the second-strongest of the four fundamental interactions, after the strong force, and it is the dominant force in the interactions of a ...
surface waves, the DSW's existence is due to the difference in
symmetry
Symmetry (from grc, συμμετρία "agreement in dimensions, due proportion, arrangement") in everyday language refers to a sense of harmonious and beautiful proportion and balance. In mathematics, "symmetry" has a more precise definit ...
of materials forming the interface. These waves are important at the interface of a biaxial anisotropic dielectric with an isotropic medium, metamaterials and they have also found use in
terahertz applications.
Awards
Professor Dyakonov is a recipient of the State prize (USSR) in physics for theoretical work on spin dynamics (1976), the Frenkel prize of the St. Petersburg Physical Society for theory of streamer discharge (1992), the Ioffe prize of the Russian Academy of Sciences for the theory of hot luminescence (1993), Beller Lectureship Award from the American Physical Society (2009), and the Grand prize from the French Physical Society (2009).
Critique of quantum computers
Dyakonov is also well known for his critique of implementations of
quantum computers
Quantum computing is a type of computation whose operations can harness the phenomena of quantum mechanics, such as superposition, interference, and entanglement. Devices that perform quantum computations are known as quantum computers. Though ...
.
He argues that practical quantum computers are not likely to be implemented. He says: "There is a tremendous gap between the rudimentary but very hard experiments that have been carried out with a few qubits and the extremely developed quantum-computing theory, which relies on manipulating thousands to millions of qubits to calculate anything useful. That gap is not likely to be closed anytime soon."
References
Living people
Place of birth missing (living people)
University of Montpellier faculty
20th-century Russian physicists
21st-century Russian physicists
Russian academics
1940 births
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