Symmetry and Fundamental Physics : Tom Kibble At 80 PDF
Preview Symmetry and Fundamental Physics : Tom Kibble At 80
Symmetry and Fundamental Physics: Tom Kibble 80 at 9073hc_9789814583015_tp.indd 1 2/12/13 11:29 am May2,2013 14:6 BC:8831-ProbabilityandStatisticalTheory PST˙ws TThhiiss ppaaggee iinntteennttiioonnaallllyy lleefftt bbllaannkk Symmetry and Fundamental Physics: Tom Kibble 80 at Edited by Jerome Gauntlett Imperial College London, UK World Scientific NEW JERSEY • LONDON • SINGAPORE • BEIJING • SHANGHAI • HONG KONG • TAIPEI • CHENNAI 9073hc_9789814583015_tp.indd 2 2/12/13 11:29 am Published by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd. 5 Toh Tuck Link, Singapore 596224 USA office: 27 Warren Street, Suite 401-402, Hackensack, NJ 07601 UK office: 57 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9HE British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. SYMMETRY AND FUNDAMENTAL PHYSICS: TOM KIBBLE AT 80 Copyright © 2014 by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission from the publisher. For photocopying of material in this volume, please pay a copying fee through the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. In this case permission to photocopy is not required from the publisher. ISBN 978-981-4583-01-5 ISBN 978-981-4583-85-5 (pbk) Printed in Singapore December2,2013 14:59 WSPC-ProceedingsTrimSize:9inx6in content v Contents Preface vii Acknowledgments xi Photos xii Tom Kibble and the Early Universe as the Ultimate High Energy Experiment 1 Neil Turok Universality of Phase Transition Dynamics: Topological Defects from Symmetry Breaking 31 Adolfo del Campo and Wojciech H. Zurek The Quest for the Higgs Boson at the LHC 89 Tejinder S. Virdee Tom Kibble: Breaking Ground and Breaking Symmetries 125 Steven Weinberg Tom Kibble at 80: After Dinner Speech 133 Frank Close Publication List — Tom W. B. Kibble 137 May2,2013 14:6 BC:8831-ProbabilityandStatisticalTheory PST˙ws TThhiiss ppaaggee iinntteennttiioonnaallllyy lleefftt bbllaannkk December11,2013 9:22 WSPC-ProceedingsTrimSize:9inx6in preface vii Preface TomKibbleisaninspirationaltheoreticalphysicistwhohasmadeprofound contributions to our understanding of the physical world. To celebrate his 80th birthday, a one-day symposium was held on March 13, 2013 at the Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College, London. Thomas Walter Bannerman Kibble was born in Madras, India on the 23rd of December 1932. His father, a statistician, was Professor of Mathematics at Madras Christian College. Tom was educated at Doveton- Corrie School, Madras to the age of ten before moving to Edinburgh, where he completed his secondary education at Melville College. His undergraduate and postgraduate education was carried out at the University of Edinburgh from 1951–1958. His PhD thesis on topics in quantum field theory was supervised by John Polkinghorne. During the final year of his PhD, Tom married Anne Allan and they were happily married until Anne’s death in April 2005. They have three children, Helen (born in 1960), Alison (born in 1963) and Robert (born in 1969), and seven grandchildren. After completing his PhD, Tom spenta yearas a CommonwealthFund Fellow at Caltech. In 1959 Tom returned to the UK taking up a postdoc position with the Theoretical Physics Group at Imperial College, which had recently been founded by Abdus Salam in 1956. In 1961 Tom was appointedtoaLectureshipandhethenremainedatImperialforthewhole of his career. A photograph of the Group in 1964 appears on page xii. During his career Tom sustained a major leadership role at Imperial. He was Head of the Theoretical Physics Group for 18 years (from 1971–1983 and 1992–1998) and he was the Head of the Department of Physics from 1983-1991. Tom’s contributions to theoretical physics have received wide recogn- ition. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1980. He was awarded the Hughes Medal of the Royal Society in 1981 and the Rutherford Medal December2,2013 16:2 WSPC-ProceedingsTrimSize:9inx6in preface viii of the Institute of Physics in 1984 (both shared with Higgs). He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1998 and was made a Fellow of Imperial College in 2009. In 2012 he won the American Physical Society’s Sakurai Prize (shared with Brout, Englert, Guralnik, HagenandHiggs).In2012hewasalsoawardedaRoyalMedaloftheRoyal Society.In2013hewasmadeanHonoraryFellowoftheInstituteofPhysics and was also awardedan ICTP Dirac Medal. OutsideofacademiaTomhasbeenanactivecampaigneragainstnuclear arms. He was Chair of the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science from 1974–1977and was Chair of Scientists Against Nuclear Arms (SANA) from 1985–1991. The symposium profiled various aspects of Tom’s long scientific career. The tenor of the meeting was set in the first talk given by Neil Turok, director of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, who described Tomas“ourguruandexample”.Hegaveamodernoverviewofcosmological theories,includingadiscussionofTom’spioneeringworkonhowtopological defects might have formed in the early universe during symmetry-breaking phase transitions. Wojciech Zurek of Los Alamos National Laboratory continued with this theme, surveying analogous processes within the context of condensed matter systems and explaining the Kibble–Zurek scaling phenomenon. The day’s events were concluded by Jim Virdee of Imperial College, who summarized the epic and successful quest of finding the Higgs boson at the Large HadronCollider at CERN. At the end of the talk, there was a standing ovation for Tom that lasted several minutes. In the evening, Steven Weinberg gave a keynote presentation to a capacityaudienceof700people.Hetalkederuditelyonsymmetrybreaking and its role in elementary particle physics. He discussed the role played by the three 1964 papers by Fran¸cois Englert and Robert Brout, by Peter Higgs, and by Gerald Guralnik, Carl Hagen and Tom himself. He also discussed the significant impact of Tom’s sole-authored 1967 paper that, among other things, explains the mechanism whereby the W and Z boson get mass while the photon remains massless. Michael Duff of Imperial College gave the vote of thanks. At the banquet dinner, the UK Minister of Science, David Willetts, stated the importance of fundamental research, praising Tom’s contri- butions. Ed Copeland, of the University of Nottingham and Tom’s most prolific collaborator, profiled Tom’s scientific leadership, vision and generosity. Tom’s son Robert recollected that while his father was doing his amazing work, family life continued as normal — although holiday December2,2013 16:2 WSPC-ProceedingsTrimSize:9inx6in preface ix destinations did strangely seem to coincide with venues for physics conferences. Frank Close of Oxford University concluded the banquet speeches by summarizing the significance of Tom’s contributions to the creation of the Standard Model. Two themes that resonated throughout the day were Tom’s extra- ordinary scientific achievements coupled with his humility. Jerome Gauntlett, Head of Theoretical Physics Imperial College, London October 2013
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