Guy Deutscher (physicist)

Guy Deutscher

Guy Deutscher (March 19, 1939 - May 4, 2024) was an Israeli experimental physicist who specialized in solid-state physics and superconductivity.. He was a Professor Emeritus of Physics at Tel Aviv University.

Early Life and Education

Deutscher was born in Berlin, Germany in 1939. His family fled the Nazis in 1939, shortly before World War II began. He earned his Ph.D. in 1967 from the University of Paris-Sud, where he studied under Nobel laureate Pierre-Gilles de Gennes as a member of "the Orsay group on superconductivity". . Deutscher's doctoral thesis focused on proximity effects in superconductors.

Career and Research

Deutscher returned to Israel after completing his Ph.D. and joined the faculty at Tel Aviv University, where he spent his entire career. His research primarily focused on the experimental study of superconductivity, with a particular emphasis on the properties of thin superconducting films and Josephson junctions. He made significant contributions to the understanding of vortex dynamics in superconductors and the development of superconducting devices.

Deutscher was a prolific researcher, publishing over 300 scientific papers in leading journals. He was also a dedicated teacher and mentor, supervising numerous graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. Many of his students went on to hold prominent positions in academia and industry in Israel and abroad. Deutscher’s many students and junior associates who went on to hold academic positions, including:

• Zvi Ovadyahu (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
• Aharon Kapitulnik (Stanford University)
• Alexander Palevski (Tel Aviv University)
• Alexander Gerber (Tel Aviv University)
• Yossi Lereah (Tel Aviv University)
• Ralf Krupke (Karlsruhe)
• Yoram Dagan (Tel Aviv University)
• Eli Farber (Ariel University)
• Emil Polturak (Technion)
• Michael Rappaport (Weizmann Institute of Science)
• Hector Castro (Bogota, Colombia)
• Leandro Tessler (Campinas, Brazil)
• Roy Beck (Tel Aviv University)

Many of his other students took key positions in the high-tech industry.

Research on Granular and Disordered Materials

In the 1970s and early 1980s, Deutscher's research group at Tel Aviv University focused on granular and disordered materials. This work involved studying the properties of thin films made from mixtures of metals and insulators. The group's research in this area was highly regarded and led to the publication of a book titled "Percolation, Structures, and Processes" by the Israel Physical Society.

Contributions to High-Temperature Superconductivity

Deutscher's expertise in granular and disordered materials proved invaluable when high-temperature superconductivity was discovered in the late 1980s. He co-authored one of the most cited papers in the field with Alex Muller, the Nobel laureate who discovered the cuprate superconductors. This paper explored the relationship between the unique properties of high-temperature superconductivity and the inherent disorder in these materials. Deutscher's insight into the short coherence length of cuprates led to the first accepted explanation for the low critical current in ceramic and polycrystalline samples of these materials.

Deutscher's group also pioneered the use of Andreev reflections to study the electronic properties of high-temperature superconductors. This technique allowed for the measurement of the superconducting gap and provided insights into the nature of the pseudogap in these materials.

Guy Deutscher's scientific contributions, as highlighted in his hallmark papers, span a wide range of topics within solid-state physics and superconductivity. These papers represent significant milestones in his research career and have had a lasting impact on the field.

1. Proximity Effects (1969): This early work, co-authored with Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, explored the interaction between superconducting and normal materials when they are in close contact. This phenomenon, known as the proximity effect, is fundamental to understanding the behavior of superconducting devices and continues to be an active area of research.
2. Fluctuations in Granular Superconductors (1973): Deutscher's research on granular aluminum films revealed the importance of critical fluctuations in systems with weakly coupled superconducting grains. This work provided insights into the behavior of superconductivity in disordered materials.
3. Percolation Description of Granular Superconductors (1980): This paper introduced the concept of percolation to explain how global superconductivity emerges in granular films. It showed that the specific heat anomaly, a characteristic feature of superconductors, disappears below the percolation threshold, where the superconducting grains are no longer connected.
4. Percolation Effects on Transport Properties (1981): Deutscher's work on granular aluminum-aluminum oxide films demonstrated that the metal-insulator transition, a fundamental phenomenon in condensed matter physics, could be described using percolation theory. This finding had implications for understanding the behavior of disordered materials.
5. Weak Localization Effects in Thin Metal Films (1981): This research provided one of the first experimental demonstrations of weak localization, a quantum phenomenon that affects the electrical resistance of thin metal films at low temperatures. This work contributed to the understanding of electron transport in disordered systems.
6. Percolation Characteristics in Thin Metal Films (1982): Deutscher's group used percolation theory to accurately describe the metal-insulator transition in thin metal films as they are grown on a substrate. This work involved digitizing and analyzing electron microscope images of the films, providing a quantitative link between the film's microstructure and its electrical properties.
7. Consequences of Short Coherence Length in High-Temperature Superconductors (1987): This seminal paper addressed the implications of the short coherence length, a characteristic length scale in superconductors, in the newly discovered high-temperature superconductors. It provided an explanation for the glassy state observed in these materials, which was a key step in understanding their unconventional behavior.
8. Optical Properties of Thin Metal Films (1989): Following their earlier work on percolation, Deutscher's group extended their research to the optical properties of thin metal films. They showed that these properties could also be described using percolation theory, further demonstrating the versatility of this theoretical framework.
9. Non-Equilibrium Effects in Thin Film Growth (1994): Deutscher's expertise in thin film growth led to the study of non-equilibrium phenomena during film growth using transmission electron microscopy. This work provided valuable insights into the dynamics of film growth and its impact on the resulting film properties.
10. Single Particle Effects in High-Temperature Superconductors (1999): In this influential paper, Deutscher proposed a new way to interpret the energy scales in high-temperature superconductors. He distinguished between the pseudogap, a measure of pairing, and the actual superconducting gap, which marks the onset of coherence. This distinction has been crucial in understanding the complex behavior of these materials.
11. Ferromagnet-Superconductor Non-Local Boundary Effect (2000): Deutscher and Feinberg theoretically investigated a specific interface geometry between a ferromagnet and a superconductor. They predicted a novel non-local effect between two ferromagnetic leads, opening up a new field of study in spintronics, which aims to exploit the unique properties of high-temperature superconductors for applications beyond traditional superconductivity.
12. Andreev Reflection into High-Temperature Superconductors (2005): Deutscher's group established the use of Andreev reflections, a phenomenon where an electron is reflected as a hole at an interface, as a powerful tool to study the electronic properties of high-temperature superconductors. This work revealed the possibility of time-reversal symmetry breaking in these materials, a finding with significant implications for their fundamental properties.

Honors and Awards

Deutscher received numerous honors and awards for his contributions to science, including the Landau Prize, the highest scientific honor awarded by the Israel Physical Society. He was also a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the Institute of Physics (UK). In recognition of his scientific achievements, the French government awarded him the Ordre des Palmes Academiques in 1986 and the Legion d'Honneur in 1999.

Leadership and Service

Deutscher was not only a brilliant scientist but also a dedicated leader and mentor. He served as the director of the Gordon Center for Energy Studies and the Heinrich Hertz Minerva Center for High-Temperature Superconductivity. He was also a member of numerous international committees, including the Executive Committee of the International Energy Agency (IEA) Implementing Agreement on High-Temperature Superconductivity.

Later Years and Legacy

In his later years, Deutscher continued to be active in research and teaching. He authored several books, including "New Superconductors: From Granular to High Tc" , "The Entropy Crisis", “Entropy And Sustainable Growth” , “The Climate Debt”. He passed away on May 4th, 2024, leaving behind a beloved family and a legacy of scientific achievement and a profound impact on the field of superconductivity.

Selected publications

• New Superconductors: From Granular to High Tc, World Scientific Publishing Co Pte Ltd (2002), ISBN 981-02-3089-3.
• The Entropy Crisis, World Scientific Publishing Co Pte Ltd (2008), ISBN 981-277-969-8.
• Entropy and Sustainable Growth, World Scientific Publishing Co Pte Ltd (2018), ISBN 978-9813237766.
• Deutscher, G., & Muller, K. A. (1987). Origin of superconductive glassy state and extrinsic critical currents in high-Tc oxides. Physical Review Letters, 59(15), 1745.
• Deutscher, G. (1999). Coherence and single-particle excitations in the high-temperature superconductors. Nature, 397(6718), 410-412.
• Deutscher, G. (2005). Andreev-Saint-James reflections: A probe of cuprate superconductors. Reviews of Modern Physics, 77(1), 109-135.
• Deutscher, G., & de Gennes, P. G. (1969). Proximity Effects. In R. D. Parks (Ed.), Superconductivity (Vol. 2, pp. 1005-1034). Marcel Dekker, Inc.
• Deutscher, G., Fenichel, H., Gershenson, M., Grunbaum, E., & Ovadyahu, Z. (1973). Transition to zero dimensionality in granular aluminum superconducting films. Journal of Low Temperature Physics, 10(1-2), 231-243.
• Deutscher, G., Entin-Wohlman, O., Fishman, S., & Shapira, Y. (1980). Percolation description of granular superconductors. Physical Review B, 21(11), 5041.
• Chui, T., Deutscher, G., Lindenfeld, P., & McLean, W. L. (1981). Conduction in granular aluminum near the metal-insulator transition. Physical Review B, 23(11), 6172.
• Van den dries, L., Van Haesendonck, C., Bruynseraede, Y., & Deutscher, G. (1981). Two-dimensional localization in thin copper films. Physical Review Letters, 46(8), 565.
• Kapitulnik, A., & Deutscher, G. (1982). Percolation characteristics in discontinuous thin films of Pb. Physical Review Letters, 49(19), 1444.
• Gadenne, P., Yagil, Y., & Deutscher, G. (1989). Transmittance and reflectance in situ measurements of semicontinuous gold films during deposition. Journal of Applied Physics, 66(7), 3019-3025.
• Kofman, R., Cheyssac, P., Aouaj, A., Lereah, Y., Deutscher, G., Ben David, T., Penisson, J. M., & Bourret, A. (1994). Surface melting enhanced by curvature effects. Surface Science, 303(1-2), 231-246.
• Deutscher, G., & Feinberg, D. (2000). Coupling superconducting-ferromagnetic point contacts by Andreev reflections. Applied Physics Letters, 76(4), 487-489.

External links

• Guy Deutscher's home page at The Raymond and Beverly Sackler School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel Aviv University.
• Superconductivity group at The Raymond and Beverly Sackler School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel Aviv University.
• Deutscher's Google Scholar page