Matthew William Choptuik (born 1961) is a Canadian theoretical physicist specializing in numerical relativity.
Matthew W. Choptuik | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1961 (age 62–63) |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Alma mater | University of British Columbia |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Theoretical physics |
| Thesis | A Study of Numerical Techniques for Radiative Problems in General Relativity (1986) |
| Doctoral advisor | W. G. Unruh |
| Doctoral students | Frans Pretorius |
Choptuik graduated from University of British Columbia with a master's degree in 1982 and a Ph.D. advised by William Unruh in 1986. He became an associate professor in 1995 at the University of Texas at Austin. In 1999 he became a member of the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara and in the same year he became a professor at University of British Columbia.
In 1993,[1] he discovered critical phenomena in gravitational collapse[2] via numerical studies. He showed—under non-generic initial conditions [3]—the possibility of the occurrence of naked singularity in general relativity with scalar matter. This had previously been the subject of a bet between Stephen Hawking, Kip Thorne and John Preskill. Hawking lost the bet after Choptuik's publication, but renewed it under non-generic initial conditions.[4]
Choptuik was the 2001 awardee of the Rutherford Memorial Medal. In 2003 he received the CAP-CRM Prize in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics. In 2003 he became a fellow of the American Physical Society. In 2002, he became an honorary doctor of Brandon University.
References
edit- ^ Choptuik, Matthew W. (1993). "Universality and scaling in gravitational collapse of a massless scalar field". Physical Review Letters. 70 (1): 9–12. Bibcode:1993PhRvL..70....9C. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.70.9. PMID 10053245.
- ^ Gundlach, Carsten; Martín-García, José M. (2007). "Critical Phenomena in Gravitational Collapse". Living Reviews in Relativity. 10 (1): 5. arXiv:0711.4620. Bibcode:2007LRR....10....5G. doi:10.12942/lrr-2007-5. PMC 5256106. PMID 28179820.
- ^ Only with precise fine tuning of the initial conditions, which is lost even with small perturbations
- ^ Crenson, Matt (February 12, 1997). "The naked truth: Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking loses a bet". AP News.[dead link]