ROBERT L. JAFFE, Jane and Otto Morningstar
Professor of Physics
Research Interests
Professor Jaffe's research specialty is the physics of elementary
particles and quantum field theory, especially the dynamics of
quark confinement and the Standard Model. Most recently he has
been researching the dynamical effects of the quantum vacuum
(Casimir Effects) on micron scales. He has also worked on the
quantum theory of tubes, the astrophysics of dense matter and many
problems in scattering theory. Jaffe teaches quantum mechanics,
field theory, mechanics and electrodynamics at the advanced
undergraduate and graduate levels.
Jaffe is best known for his research on the quark substructure of
matter. In the early 1970s he and his colleagues at MIT formulated
the first consistent description of quark confinement, the "MIT Bag
Model." Together with John Ellis of CERN, Jaffe formulated a sum
rule which relates polarized lepton scattering to the spin
substructure of the nucleon. Tests of this sum rule sparked a
renewal of interest in the hadron spin physics. His more recent
work in this area (in collaboration with Xiangdong Ji of the
University of Maryland) includes the elucidation of the
"transversity," a novel quark spin observable accessible in hard
scattering experiments. He has been deeply involved in the
development of the spin physics program at Brookhaven National Lab.
Jaffe also began the systematic study of exotic hadrons in the
1970s. He proposed that the scalar (spinless) mesons should be
interpreted as two quark, two antiquark states, an interpretation
which has only recently won wide acceptance. He and Kenneth
Johnson (at MIT) launched the theory of glueballs—hadrons made
entirely of the gluons which mediate confining forces. Together
with Edward Farhi (also at MIT), Jaffe first described the
properties of strange quark matter and explored its significance in
astrophysics.
In the late 1990's Jaffe, Farhi, and collaborators developed
analytical and computational tools for the study of quantum vacuum
energies—Casimir energies—with applications to problems
ranging from micromachinery to beyond the Standard Model. Recently
this work has taken a practical turn: Antonello Scardicchio
(MIT, now Princeton) and Mehran Kardar (MIT), Jaffe developed
powerful practical methods to determine the geometry dependence of
Casimir forces as they affect micro-electro-mechancial systems
(MEMS). Most recently, in collaboration with Thorsten Emig (CNRS- Saclay), Noah Graham (Middlebury), and Kardar, Jaffe has developed
practical methods to compute electromagnetic Casimir forces and
torques between compact objects of arbitrary shapes whether perfect
conductors or dielectrics. This work promises major advances in
the calculation of Casimir forces.
Jaffe continues to work on the physics of quarks and hadrons. In
2003 Jaffe and Frank Wilczek (MIT) reconsidered the importance of
di-quark correlations in quantum chromodynamics. In 2005 and 2006
Jaffe and collaborators explored the importance of parity doubling
in hadron spectroscopy, and catagorized "ordinary" and
"extraordinary" resonances in QCD.
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Biographical Sketch
Robert L. Jaffe is the Jane and Otto Morningstar Professor of
Physics at MIT, and the former Director of the MIT Center for
Theoretical Physics. Professor Jaffe received his AB, summa cum
laude in Physics from Princeton, where he was Valedictorian of the
Class of 1968. He received his MS and PhD degrees from Stanford in
1971 and 1972, respectively. At Stanford he founded the Stanford
Workshops on Political and Social Issues.
In 1972 Jaffe came to MIT as a postdoctoral research associate in
the Center for Theoretical Physics. He joined the faculty in
1974. From 1975 until 1979, he was an A. P. Sloan Foundation
Research Fellow. Professor Jaffe has spent sabbatical years at the
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (1976), Oxford University and
the European Center for Nuclear Research (1978-9), at Boston
University (1986-7), and at Harvard University (1996-7. In
2004 Jaffe was a resident scholar at the Rockefeller Foundation
Study Center at Bellagio, Italy. He has served on the program
advisory committees of several national laboratories and for many
years he was the chairman of the Advisory Council of the Physics
Department of Princeton University. He now serves as Chair of the
Science and Engineering Steering Committee of Brookhaven National
Laboratory and a member of the Brookhaven Science Associates Board
of Directors. Since 1996 he has been an advisor to and Visiting
Scientist at the RIKEN-Brookhaven Research Center.
Jaffe is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American
Association for the Advancement of Science. He has been awarded
the Science Council Prize for Excellence in Teaching Undergraduates
(1983), the Graduate Student Council Teaching Award (1988), and the
Physics Department Buechner Teaching Prize (1997). In January
1998, Jaffe was named a Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow (1998) in
recognition of his contributions to MIT's teaching program. Since
2005 Jaffe has been collaborating on the development of a new
private university of science and technology in Lahore, Pakistan, as
a member and chair of their external advisory committee. The new
Lahore University of Management and Science, School of Science and
Engineering, will admit its first freshman class in the Fall of
2008. In November 2007, Jaffe was elected to a three year term on
the American Physical Society's Panel on Public Affairs.
Jaffe has been very active in MIT affairs. He was cofounder of the
Symposium at MIT, an interdisciplinary faculty program dedicated to
improving communication and the exchange of ideas within the
faculty. He has served as chairman of MIT's Committee on the
Undergraduate Program and its Faculty Policy Committee. In 1992 he
was elected to a term as Chair of the MIT Faculty which concluded
in June of 1995.
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Selected Recent Publications
On Exotic Baryons:
A Perspective on
Pentaquarks, R. Jaffe and F. Wilczek.
Systematics of Exotic
Cascade Decays, R. Jaffe and F. Wilczek.
Exotic Diquark Spectroscopy,
R. Jaffe and F. Wilczek.
On the Casimir Effect:
The Casimir Effect
and Geometrical Optics, A. Scardicchio and R. Jaffe.
The Dirichlet Casimir
Problem, N. Graham, R. Jaffe, V. Khemani, M. Quandt, O. Schroeder
and H. Weigel.
Heavy Fermion Quantum
Effects in SU(2)_L Gauge Theory, E. Farhi, N. Graham, R. L.
Jaffe, V. Khemani, H. Weigel.
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Recent Seminars & Colloquia
Winter 2004
Exotica
[Fermilab, February 2004] Note: Requires QuickTime
Player.
Summer 2003
•Exotic
Diquark Spectroscopy
•Unnatural
Acts: Unphysical Consequences of Imposing Boundary Conditions on
Quantum Fields
•Gluon
Spin Basics
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