Alexander Yurievich Potekhin Doctor of Sciences, Chief Research Scientist at the Department of Theoretical Astrophysics of the Ioffe Institute. ResearcherID: B-9747-2014 ORCID: 0000-0001-9955-4684 Scopus Author ID: 7006086889 Address: Ioffe Institute Politekhnicheskaya 26 St.Petersburg 194021 Russia Telephone numbers: +7 812 292 7 180 +7 812 292 7 326 Mobile phone: +7 911 9248202 E-mail: palex-spb@yandex.ru palex@astro.ioffe.ru alexander.y.potekhin@gmail.com

Research interests

• Current research is mostly related to the physics of neutron stars, primarily the outer envelopes of neutron stars:
  • Electron transport of heat and charge in dense plasmas
  • Equation of state of dense plasmas
  • Opacities of neutron-star atmospheres
  • Influence of the strong magnetic field on the electron transport coefficients, equation of state, and opacities
  Results of these studies have been implemented in the online databases:
  • electron conductivities in fully ionized plasmas
  • equation of state of partially ionized hydrogen in strong magnetic fields.
  • equation of state of fully ionized nonideal plasmas.
  Based on these results is my "Doktor nauk" (≈ habilitation) thesis, defended on 10.12.2009:
  • summary ("avtoreferat") (PDF, 259 K, in Russian; typos fixed in 2011)
  • full text (PDF, 5.9 M, in Russian; typos fixed in 2011)
• I also used to participate in studies in other branches of physics and astrophysics (for example, constraints on possible variability of fundamental physical constants jointly with Prof. D.A. Varshalovich in 1991-2003) - see publications.
• Past research (1984-1991) was mostly concerned with numerical and analytical methods of calculation of the statistical moments (e.g., mean specific intensity and its autocorrelation function) of light propagating in randomly inhomogeneous media (PhD 1991).

  In the 1980s-'90s I also occasionally participated in theoretical studies of thermal desorption of atoms from surfaces, aimed at explaining the experiment (see publications).

Additional information

• Curriculum Vitae
  
• Publications
• A few lectures on compact stars for general public in Russian (two videos and one essay).
• A few lectures on compact stars for students of Saint-Petersburg Polytechnical Institute in Russian (PDF slides).