Professional Experience

• University of Paris, Fulbright Pre-doctoral fellow, 1950-51
• Institute for Advanced Study, Member, 1952-1954.

Research Interests

• Theoretical particle physics
• Quantum mechanics: foundations, quantum optics, quantum statistics, etc.
• General relativity, relativistic cosmology, etc.
• Nonlinear dynamics, chaos, etc.

Selected Abstracts

"Gravitational waves in matter", Gen. Rel. Grav. 29, 117 (1997).

The theory of gravitational waves in matter is given. This covers the questions of constitutive relation, number of independent polarizations, index of refraction, reflection and refraction at an interface, etc. The theory parallels the familiar optics of electromagnetic waves in material media, but there are some striking differences. The use of the Campbell-Morgan formalism in which the gauge-invariant tidal force dyads E and B rather than the gauge-dependent metric perturbations are the unknowns is essential. The main justification of the theory at the moment is as a theoretical exercise worth doing. The assumption: size L of the medium >> gravitational wave length l ("infinite medium") rules out application to the already well-understood detection problem, but there may be an application to gravitational wave propagation through molecular gas clouds of galactic or inter-galactic size.

"An explanation of the 'negative neutrino mass squared effect' in tritium b-decay", submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett.

A proposed solution of the anomalous behavior of the electron spectrum at the endpoint of tritium b-decay found in many experiments since 1991 (the so-called "negative neutrino mass squared effect") is offered. It involves "new physics," but not of the expected kind: we assume a massless neutrino, and no new forces or particles are introduced. A theoretical justification of the solution is briefly described.