Lance Jenkins Dixon (born 22 June 1961, in

Pasadena, California Pasadena ( ) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States, northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is the most populous city and the primary cultural center of the San Gabriel Valley. Old Pasadena is the city's original commerci ...

) is an American theoretical particle physicist. He is a professor in the SLAC Theory Group at the

Stanford Linear Accelerator Center SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, originally named the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, is a Federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center in Menlo Park, California, Menlo Park, Ca ...

(SLAC) at

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

. Dixon received in 1982 his B.S. in physics and applied mathematics from

Caltech The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private university, private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small g ...

and received in 1986 his doctorate from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

. As a postdoc he was at SLAC. From 1987 he was assistant professor at Princeton University, from 1989 he was a Panofsky Fellow at the SLAC and in 1992 he became an associate professor and in 1998 a full professor at SLAC. He has been a visiting professor at the

École normale supérieure École or Ecole may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by Secondary education in France, secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing i ...

and the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

( Clare Hall). Starting in the 1990s Dixon developed, with Zvi Bern and others, new methods (''generalized unitarity methods'' among others) for the calculation of

Feynman diagram In theoretical physics, a Feynman diagram is a pictorial representation of the mathematical expressions describing the behavior and interaction of subatomic particles. The scheme is named after American physicist Richard Feynman, who introduced ...

s in

quantum chromodynamics In theoretical physics, quantum chromodynamics (QCD) is the study of the strong interaction between quarks mediated by gluons. Quarks are fundamental particles that make up composite hadrons such as the proton, neutron and pion. QCD is a type of ...

(QCD) and other Yang–Mills theories. These new methods became more relevant with the requirements of the

Large Hadron Collider The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. It was built by the CERN, European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008, in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists, ...

calculations in the 2000s and also provided new insights into the divergences in the

supergravity In theoretical physics, supergravity (supergravity theory; SUGRA for short) is a modern field theory that combines the principles of supersymmetry and general relativity; this is in contrast to non-gravitational supersymmetric theories such as ...

perturbation series. In 2014, with Zvi Bern and David Kosower, Dixon received the

Sakurai Prize The J. J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics, also commonly referred to as just the Sakurai Prize, is a prize awarded by the American Physical Society. It is presented annually at the Society's April meeting and honors "outstanding a ...

for "pathbreaking contributions to the calculation of perturbative scattering amplitudes, which led to a deeper understanding of quantum field theory and to powerful new tools for computing

QCD In theoretical physics Theoretical physics is a branch of physics that employs mathematical models and abstractions of physical objects and systems to rationalize, explain, and predict List of natural phenomena, natural phenomena. This is in ...

processes." His 1991 publication with Vadim S. Kaplunovsky and Jan Louis has over 800 citations. In 1995 Dixon was elected a Fellow of the

American Physical Society The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of ...

. He was elected a member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

in 2022.

Selected publications

* Dixo
"Calculating scattering amplitudes efficiently"
TASI Lectures 1996 * Dixo
"UV Behavior of N = 8 Supergravity"
Erice School 2009 * Bern, Dixon, Kosower "Quantum Gravity Particles may resemble ordinary particles of force2", ''Scientific American'', May 2012 * Bern, Dixon, Kosowe
"On-shell methods in perturbative QCD"
''Annals of Physics'', 322, 2007, 1587–1634 * Bern, Dixon, Kosowe
"Progress in 1 loop QCD calculations"
''Annual Review Nuclear Particle Physics'', 46, 1996, 109–148

Awards, honors

* Fellow, American Physical Society, 1995 * Fellow, National Academy of Sciences, 2022 * Galileo Galilei Medal, 2023

References

External links

Homepage at SLAC
* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Dixon, Lance J California Institute of Technology alumni Princeton University alumni Stanford University faculty Fellows of the American Physical Society American particle physicists 21st-century American physicists J. J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics recipients 1961 births Living people Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences