IAS Fellow at Grey College, Durham University (January – March 2018)
Boris Malomed was born in Minsk (Belarus, ex-USSR) in 1955. He had graduated from the Department of Physics in Minsk in 1977. He had received PhD in physics from the Moscow Physico-Technical Institute in 1981, and D.Sc. (habilitation) from the Institute for Theoretical Physics of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (Kiev) in 1989. He worked in Moscow till September 1991 as a senior researcher at the Institute for Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He has been with the Tel Aviv University since 1991, as an associate professor in 1991-1999, and as a full professor since 1999. He is a chaired professor (holding a research chair on “Optical Solitons”) since 2012.
His recent research work has been focused on theoretical studies of nonlinear waves and nonlinear dynamics in optics, matter waves (Bose-Einstein condensates), dissipative media (modeled by Ginzburg-Landau equations), dynamical lattices, and in related systems. The main subjects of these studies are solitons (self-trapped solitary waves) and solitary vortices, as well as multi-soliton complexes and periodic or quasi-periodic patterns, in models of conservative and dissipative nonlinear media. These localized and delocalized structures have been studied in both one- and multidimensional settings. In particular, in the latter case a challenging problem is the stabilization of solitons and solitary vortices against the collapse (spontaneous formation of singularities) and splitting. Addressing this problem, his recent works have revealed stable localized two- and three-dimensional modes carrying intrinsic topological structures, such as multiple vortices, semi-vortices (two-component bound states of vortices and zero-vorticity solitons), and hopfions (twisted vortex rings, which carry two independent topological charges). He also continues the work in other directions which belong to the above-mentioned general area, such as solitons supported by nonlinear lattices, i.e., spatially periodic modulations of the local strength of the self-interaction of the underlying physical fields, solitons in media with nonlocal interactions (in particular, in dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates), nonlinear systems with the so-called PT symmetry, which is represented by spatially separated and mutually balanced gain and loss elements, and others.
Currently, his research work is supported, inter alia, by a major grant jointly provided by NSF (USA) and Binational (US-Israel) Science Foundation, on the topic of dynamics of matter-wave solitons. Collaborators in this project are Profs. Randall Hulet (Rice University, Houston), Maxim Olshanii (University of Massachusetts, Boston), and Vladimir Yurovsky (Tel Aviv University). Professor Malomed also maintains active research collaborations with other colleagues in several countries, including China, Japan, USA, Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, UK, Russia, Serbia, Romania, Mexico, Chile, Brazil, and Israel. He was recently appointed a senior international consultant at the Foshan University in China.
Professor Malomed is currently an adviser to a postdoc, two PhD and two MS students.
His publication list includes two books, ca. 20 review articles, and more than 1000 original papers in peer-reviewed journals. His h-index is 65 and 77, as given, severally, by the Web of Science and Google Scholar, with the total number of citations in excess of 30,500. This means that he belongs to a rather small group of researchers whose h-index exceeds their age. He had served, in the period of 2009-2015, as a Divisional Associate Editor of Physical Review Letters. He is an Outstanding Referee of the American Physical Society and Optical Society of America.