Contributions of Yuri L. Klimontovich to the kinetic theory of nonideal plasmas

Abstract

We give a short summary of live and work of Yuri L. Klimontovich (1924Klimontovich ( -2002, in particular we discuss his work on nonideal plasma physics.Finally we arrived at the end of our long way. No doubt, not everything on this long path was sufficiently smooth. Yuri L. Klimontovich, in the conclusions to his book "Statistical Physics" (1982) 1 On the biography of YLK YLK was born on September 28 1924 in Moscow. His mother, Natalia Vladimirovna Vladykina, was from the famous russian noble family Vladykin which is of tataric origin and took service under Ivan the Terrible. At that time they obtained very large land property and became wealthy (what expresses the meaning of the family name). His father also came from a noble family, in second generation. He was arrested under Stalin's terror regime in 1931 and killed after 2 weeks (only 62 years later the family received an official information). Since his mother died soon after, Yuri and his 2 brothers lived with the family of an aunt under very poor conditions. To support the family, Yuri carried luggage at railway stations. He fell ill on tuberculosis and survived a very difficult operation. For this reason he did not serve in the army and studied for a short time at an Engineering institute (college). After the war, in 1946, Yuri began to study physics at Moscow State Lomonosov University (MGU). The adviser of his diploma (master) thesis on "radiative friction" [1] was Prof. V.S. Fursov. The very active young man wanted to become an "aspirant" (graduate student) and write a dissertation. However, this was refused by the authorities since he was considered the son of a "repressirovan" (repressed) father. Shortly after the refusal of "aspirantura" and of employment at the Academy of sciences as well, just by a lucky chance, Yuri met Prof. Nikolai N. Bogoliubov near the Academy who asked him about his plans. Having a very high opinion about Yuri, Bogoliubov took him personally as a PhD student, ignoring the official decision. In 1951 Yuri defended his dissertation. He knew very well that without the support of Fursov (who later served many years as the dean of the Department and Bogoliubov (who later held high positions in the Academy) he never would have had a chance to make a scientific carrier. He always expressed highest opinions about his advisers.Starting physics with some problems given by his advisers, YLK went on to develop quite independently a new theory of plasmas based on his new method called "second quantization in phase space" [3]. Among his coauthors of this period were Silin (work on excitation spectra, [2]), and Ebeling (hydrodynamic approximation).

Yuri L'vovich Klimontovich, his theory of fluctuations and its impact on the kinetic theory

“…His parents belonged to noble families which fact has turned out to be a sufficient reason for his father to be arrested under Stalin's regime in 1931 and killed only 2 weeks later. [ 14 ] Similarly, Joseph Maevsky, the father of Klimontovich's wife Svetlana Maevska, was arrested and shot in December 1937. So both families suffered a great tragedy and this also influenced Yuri Lvovich's views throughout his life.…”

“…This concept was very influential in plasma physics and kinetic theory in the Soviet Union and it was also being picked up by many theorists in Western Europe and the U.S. After Yu. L. Klimontovich passed away in 2002 his scientific achievements were discussed in a series of papers, complemented by personal recollections, for example, see References [13–15], more articles are listed in Reference [14]. In 2004, a workshop “Physics of nonideal plasmas” in honor of Klimontovich took place in Kiel, Germany, organized by one of the authors (MB).…”

Quantum fluctuations approach to the nonequilibrium GW approximation

“…The idea is that correlation effects can be equivalently formulated in terms of correlation functions of fluctuations. This has been studied in detail, for classical systems by Klimontovich, see e.g., [10][11][12], for an overview on his work see references [13,14]. For quantum systems, similar concepts were developed by Ayik, Lacroix and many others, e.g., [15][16][17].…”