Pierre Sikivie (born 29 October 1949) is an American

theoretical physicist Theoretical physics is a branch of physics that employs mathematical models and abstractions of physical objects and systems to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena. This is in contrast to experimental physics, which uses experimen ...

and currently the Distinguished Professor of

Physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

University of Florida The University of Florida (Florida or UF) is a public land-grant research university in Gainesville, Florida. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida, traces its origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its ...

Gainesville, Florida Gainesville is the county seat of Alachua County, Florida, Alachua County, Florida, and the largest city in North Central Florida, with a population of 141,085 in 2020. It is the principal city of the Gainesville metropolitan area, Florida, Gaine ...

. He invented the axion haloscope and the axion helioscope and has played an important role in the development of axion cosmology.

Academic career

Sikivie completed his Licencie en Sciences from

University of Liège The University of Liège (french: Université de Liège), or ULiège, is a major public university of the French Community of Belgium based in Liège, Wallonia, Belgium. Its official language is French. As of 2020, ULiège is ranked in the 301 ...

, Belgium in 1970 and completed his Ph.D. in

under

Feza Gürsey Feza Gürsey (; April 7, 1921 – April 13, 1992) was a Turkish mathematician and physicist. Among his most prominent contributions to theoretical physics, his works on the Chiral model and on SU(6) are most popular. Early life Feza Gürse ...

from

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

in 1975 with thesis ''Lepton and Hadron Spectra in Universal Gauge Theories''. He was a research associate at Dept. of Phys., Univ. of Maryland from 1975 to 1977 and at

SLAC 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. Departm ...

from 1977 to 1979. He became Senior Fellow at

CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in a northwestern suburb of Gene ...

from 1979 to 1981 and assistant professor at University of Florida from 1981 to 1984. He became an associate professor of physics at

in 1984, and promoted to professor in 1988. He received his present title of "Distinguished Professor" in 2012. He is the 2020 recipient of 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 ...

. In 1994 Sikivie 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 a Guggenheim Fellow for the academic year 1997–1998.Pierre Sikivie, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
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Dark matter axion physics

Sikivie played a crucial role in the development of the Axion Dark Matter eXperiment ( ADMX). In 1983, Sikivie, along with J. Preskill, M. B. Wise, F. Wilczek, L. F. Abbott, M. Dine, and W. Fischler, discovered that cosmic axions created from mis-alignment mechanism can be a substantial fraction of Dark Matter. Later Sikivie laid the theoretical ground for dark matter axion detections such as the ADMX.

References

External links

Personal Page of Pierre Sikivie

The ADMX
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sikivie, Pierre 1949 births Living people People from Sint-Truiden 21st-century American physicists University of Liège alumni Yale University alumni Fellows of the American Physical Society University of Florida faculty Theoretical physicists People associated with CERN J. J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics recipients

Academic career

Dark matter axion physics

See also

References

External links