Amnon Aharony was born in
Jerusalem, and grew up in
Netanya, Israel. He received his
B.Sc. in
Physics and
Mathematics in 1964 from the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His
M.Sc. thesis, under the supervision of Gideon Rakavy, was on the distorted wave Born approximation for direct nuclear reactions (1965), from the same university. He received his doctorate in 1972 from Tel Aviv University, under the supervision of
Yuval Ne'eman. Thesis title: Aspects of time reversal symmetry violation.[1]
He returned to Israel in 1975 to become an associate professor of physics in Tel Aviv University, and a full professor in 1979. From 1990 he held the
Moyses Nussenzveig Chair in Statistical Physics. Aharony retired from the university as Professor Emeritus in 2006. At that year he joined Ben Gurion University of the Negev, where he became Distinguished Professor Emeritus during 2013–2020.
Phase transitions: Aharony applied the renormalization group to identify and classify
universality classes of critical (e.g. cubic, dipolar) and
multicritical points.[8][10] His work on random systems involved systems with random fields[11][12] and the general issues of
self-averaging.[13] Aharony introduced
fractal geometry into several branches of statistical physics, especially in connection with the many fractal sub-structures of dilute
percolating systems,[14][15] with applications to oil recovery.
Quantum magnetism: Aharony explained the structures and phase diagrams of magnetic oxide systems. This includes the magnetic structures of the high temperature
superconducting parent cuprates, and the prediction of the spin glass phase there,[16] the discovery of a special symmetry in the
Dzyaloshinskii-Moria interaction (now called the Shekhtman-Entin-Wohlman-Aharony symmetry)[17] and the ordered phases of various
multiferroic materials.[18]
Mesoscopic physics: Aharony participated in critical discussions of the
Aharonov-Bohm interferometer.
[19][20][21] In recent years, he concentrates on the effects of the spin-orbit interaction on transport in mesoscopic spintronic systems, including proposals of spin filters which may be relevant to
quantum information processing.[22][23][24]
Publications
Aharony is the author of 8 books and more than 450 articles.[25] According to
Google Scholar (September 2023) he has more than 50,000 citations and his
h-index is 87.[26]
Selected books
A. Aharony and J. Feder, editors. Fractals in Physics. Proceedings of a Conference, Vence, France (North Holland, Amsterdam, 1989)
D. Stauffer and A. Aharony. Introduction to Percolation Theory. Taylor and Francis, London (1992); revised 2nd edition (1994);[27] German translation: Perkolationstheorie, Eine Einführung, VCH, Weinheim (1995); Japanese translation: PA-KO RE-SHON NO KI HON GEN RI, Yoshiokashoten, Kyoto (2001).
A. Aharony and
O. Entin-Wohlman, editors. Perspectives of Mesoscopic Physics. World Scientific, Singapore (2010)[28]
A. Aharony and O. Entin-Wohlman. Introduction to Solid State Physics. In Hebrew, Open University, Israel (2018), 600 pages;[29] English translation: World Scientific, Singapore (2018)[30]
Fellow,
American Physical Society, USA, 1985, "for contributions to the theory of new critical and multicritical points, of random field systems and their experimental realization and of using fractals in statistical physics and in percolation"[31]