Richard Liboff

Richard Liboff

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Richard L. Liboff is a U.S. physicist who has authored five books and nearly 150 other publications in variety of fields, including plasma physics, planetary physics, cosmology, quantum chaos, and quantum billiards.^[1]

Career

He earned his Ph.D., 1961 from New York University. His advisors were Harold Grad in mathematics (13 moment method) and B. Zumino in physics (TCP theory). During his graduate years, he was a Research Assistant at the Courant Institute.

After graduation, he stayed on as Assistant Professor of Physics. In 1965, he was appointed Associate Professor in the College of Engineering at Cornell. Later appointments at Cornell included membership in the Center for Applied Mathematics and the Department of Applied & Engineering Physics. Fulbright Program and Solvay Fellowships supported three sabbatic leaves abroad. He was appointed Full Professor in 1970. His research was supported by AFSOR and ARO. In 1969, he chaired the first International Meeting in Kinetic Theory, sponsored by the NSF and co-chaired by N. Rostoker.

At present he is Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of Central Florida.

Bibliography

Notable publications

Among his publications, three works are of particular note:

• With a student (G. K. Schenter) he analytically solved a second order non-linear differential equation. One of the three solutions they gave had physical relevance, as it is a generalized Fermi-Dirac distribution relevant to high-field transport in a semiconductor.^[2]
• An ideal dynamical system was shown to be irreversible.^{[citation needed]}
• Liboff showed that a particle confined to a rectangular domain is, in general, quantum chaotic.^[3]

Books

Richard Liboff is the author of five books, three of which are still viable:

• Richard L. Liboff (2003). Primer for Point and Space Groups. Springer. ISBN 0387402489. 
• Richard L. Liboff (2003). Kinetic Theory: Classical , Quantum and Relativistic Descriptions (3rd edition ed.). Springer. ISBN 0387955518. 
• Richard L. Liboff (2002). Introductory Quantum Mechanics (4th edition ed.). Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-8053-8714-5. 

An earlier edition of the Kinetic Theory text was translated into Russian and an earlier edition of the Quantum Mechanics text was translated into Korean.

Selected articles

1. “Solution to a New Non-Linear Equation for the Distribution of Charge Carriers in a Semi-conductor,” Phys. Rev. B35, 7063 (1986). Co-author with G.K. Schenter.
2. “Irreversible Wall Collisions and Thermalization of a Gas of Inert Atoms,” Phys. Lett. A 202, 177 (1995).
3. “Quantum Chaos for the Radially Vibrating Spherical Billiard,” Chaos 10, 366 (2000). Co-author with Mason Porter.
4. “Quantum Billiard Chaos,” Phys. Letters A265,230 (2000).
5. “Excess Radiation from the Large Planets.” Asronomical J, 134, (2008)

References

1. ^ http://www.ece.cornell.edu/peo-detail.cfm?NetID=rll9 Cornell ECE department faculty profile page
2. ^ http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PRB/v34/i10/p7063_1 Schenter, Liboff (1986), Phys. Rev. B
3. ^ http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=CHAOEH000010000002000366000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=yes Liboff, Porter (2000), Chaos

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