Matthias Grabiak
Matthias Grabiak | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Residence | San Francisco, United States |
| Nationality | German |
| Alma mater | Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt |
| Known for | Nuclear physics, gauge theories in strong fields, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Theoretical physics, Computer science |
| Institutions | Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Oracle Corporation |
Matthias Grabiak is a German-born theoretical physicist and software engineer who worked in nuclear physics before moving into the computer industry. His research concentrated on the theory of relativistic heavy-ion collisions and on the behaviour of gauge theories in strong external fields.
Biography
Grabiak grew up in Germany and studied physics at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, where he received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics in 1988. In 1988 he was awarded a Feodor Lynen Research Fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and from 1989 through 1992 he was a post-doctoral researcher in the Nuclear Science Division of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in Berkeley, California, where his host was the theorist Miklós Gyulassy.
After his fellowship he left academic research and began working in the software industry. He has since been employed at Oracle Corporation while retaining a continued interest in physics. He resides in the San Francisco Bay Area of California.
Work
Grabiak's physics research was carried out largely within the Frankfurt school of relativistic nuclear theory associated with Walter Greiner. His publications addressed the geometric structure of gauge theories, spontaneously broken gauge theories in strong external fields, and signatures of high-energy nuclear collisions. In work with Berndt Müller and Walter Greiner he studied the production of b and b-bar quarks by photon-gluon fusion in heavy-ion collisions as a probe of the gluon distribution of nucleons inside a nucleus.
Selected publications include:
- M. Grabiak, G. Staadt, B. Müller, W. Greiner, A. Schäfer, "Spontaneously broken gauge theory in strong external fields", Physics Letters B 183 (1987).
- M. Grabiak, B. Müller, W. Greiner, "Production of b and b-bar quarks by photon-gluon fusion in heavy-ion collisions", Physics Letters B 262 (1991).