H. (Holger) Waalkens, Prof
Research interests
My research is in the fields of dynamical systems theory and semiclassical quantum mechanics (short wavelengths asymptotics). My research is very broad and applied in nature and a general guiding principle is to make an impact on prominent problems in the natural sciences (mainly atomic and molecular physics, celestial mechanics, electron transport problems and optics). In fact I strongly believe that in order to be successful in modern science one cannot afford to have borders between different disciplines. My interest in dynamical systems first of all concerns Hamiltonian systems and has a very geometric flavor. This also relates to semiclassical quantum mechanics which provides techniques to relate quantum states (their wave functions or phase space analogues like Wigner or Husimi functions) to classical phase space structures in the limit where Planck's constant can be considered as small compared to other characteristic scales of the quantum problem (this could, e.g., mean that the quantum mechanical wavelength is short compared to classical lengths scales). This does not only shed light on the quantum problem as such but also provides powerful techniques to compute quantities which are notoriously difficult to compute from ab initio quantum calculations.
More information on my personal pages.