Nationality USA Institutions University of Florida Field Physics | Fields Physics Alma mater Yale University Institution University of Florida | |
Born October 29, 1949 (age 67)
Sint-Truiden, Belgium ( 1949-10-29 ) Known for Axion Cosmology, Axion Dark Matter Experiments | ||
Pierre Sikivie (born 29 October 1949) is Distinguished Professor of Physics at University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida. He invented axion haloscope. and has played an important role in the development of axion cosmology.
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Academic career
Sikivie completed his Licencie en Sciences from University of Liege, Belgium in 1970 and completed his Ph. D. in Physics from Yale University in 1975. He was a Research Associate at Dept. of Phys., Univ. of Maryland from 1975 to 1977 and at SLAC from 1977 to 1979. He became Senior Fellow at CERN from 1979 to 1981 and Assistant Professor at University of Florida from 1981 to 1984. He became an Associate Professor of Physics at University of Florida in 1984, and promoted to Professor in 1988. He received his present title of "Distinguished Professor" in 2012.
Dark matter axion physics
Sikivie played a crucial role in the development of the Axion Dark Matter eXperiment (ADMX). In 1983, Sikivie, along with J. Preskill, M. B. Wise, F. Wilczek, L. F. Abbott, M. Dine, and W. Fischler, discovered that cosmic axions created from mis-alignment mechanism can be a substantial fraction of Dark Matter. Later Sikivie laid the theoretical ground for dark matter axion detections such as the ADMX.