abstract | - Dr Tawfik is a very energetic researcher. He graduated from the University of Assiut-Egypt in 1989. He completed his Master degree in the field of Theoretical Physics at this Egyptian University too, before he moved to the Philipps-Univertsität Marburg in Germany for the [PhD]-degree. He has been awarded with the degree “Dr.rer.Nat” (PhD) in the High Energy physics in 1999. Because of this distinguished achievements in Germany, he has been appointed to work in numerous research institutions there, for example the Fraunhofer Society and the German Space Agency besides various German Universities. He also worked for one year in Japan at the Hiroshima University. Nevertheless, Dr Tawfik decided couple years ago to come back to Egypt, in order to transfer his expertise to the academic society in his home country. Dr Tawfik is considered as an active member of the world particle physics community. He published around 40 refereed papers and served as a referee for many famous international journals. He has been participating and/or organizing various national and international meetings. To the local Egyptian community Dr Tawfik used since almost a decade to publish articles in newspaper and magazine on public issues and to give public lectures on science and its different impacts to improve the rate and quality of development in Egypt. Currently, he is supervising the academic works of many Master and PhD students. He is also active in securing funds for the scientific activities and adds considerable contributions to promote the science in general. To his scientific achievements Dr Tawfik introduced and is conducting new scientific school in Egypt; the school of the numerical simulations on the lattice for the Quantum-chromodynaics (QCD), the theory of strong interactions. For this techniques one need powerful computing facilities and effective numerical algorithms. The results obtained out of these simulations have a great impact on our understanding of the matter under extreme conditions, the phase transitions and the development of the Universe. A detailed description of Dr. Tawfik’s scientific achievements are as follows: The major scientific accomplishments of Dr. Tawfik can be summarized as ”analyzing of two very close related subjects in high energy physics”. The first one is represented by a systematic work to have an answer to the question; in which physical state goes the hadron world, when we increase the temperature and the pressure? In other words, how does the "universal" phase diagram look like? The second subject is a very special case out of this. In this case, one of these two conditions is excluded and its consequences on the behavior of the quark matter in its ground state are studied. It is obvious that the first subject reflects the physics in the Early Universe and that of the exotic hot and dense cosmological objects as well. On the other hand, the nowadays technology allows us to reproduce matter at very high temperatures and pressure (baryon number density) in the laboratory, so that we can experimentally elaborate the physical characteristics of the matter. Studying the quark matter at very low temperatures and pressure is original. Dr Tawfik assumed a special case, with which one can study the ground states of the hadrons, which is composed of several quarks. Dr. Tawfik takes into consideration different configurations, like the degeneracy, the flavor quantum numbers etc. Doing this, we can study the entropy arising from the mixing of degenerate colors. Switching on the pressure, which means increasing the baryon number density, one practically move on (or scan) the phase diagram towards the region of the so-called color-superconductivity. The quark matter under these circumstances can be found in cores of compact stellar objects, like neutron stars, etc. Besides the phenomenological contributions Tawfik's work is original in studying the basics of quark matter and elaborating the concept of confinement. Main Scientific Contributions Specifying the degrees of freedom (dof) governing the phase transition from hadrons to quark-gluon plasma and vice-versa. Over several decades of particle physics research, we find that the more incident energy (temperature) available, the heavier resonances are produced. The hadronic resonances are the effective dof responsible for the phase transition at the physical masses. The glueballs contain essential dof required at heavy masses Grasping up these results is based on combining lattice quantum chromodynamics (QCD) and effective models with phenomenological observations. Characterizing the line of phase transition at finite chemical potential (baryon number density) as a certain value of energy density. This original scientific result obviously plays a crucial role in the heavy-ion collisions experiments and in constructing new hadron colliders. It determines a specific critical value to characterize the phase transition itself, which has to be verified experimentally. Suggesting the quark-antiquark condensates as an order parameter to characterize the phase transition from the hadronic matter to the quark-gluon plasma. Dr. Tawfik predicted that the strangeness quark plays a crucial role in determining the location of the phase transition line. This result is very useful in planning new heavy-ion collisions experiments and illustrates the essential role of the strangeness quark at the critical phase transition line. Predicting the order of the phase transition as second order one at zero chemical potential (baryon number density) and first order one at very large chemical potential (baryon number density). These two lines are expected to be connected by a cross-over region. In this region, the phase transition is rapid but not so sharp enough. Obviously, the physical world is located in this region. Determining the line of the chemical freeze-out at finite chemical potential (baryon number density). There are few experimental results on the location of the chemical freeze-out line. Dr. Tawfik suggested using the entropy in order to describe the chemical freeze-out. With this result, we have in hand a theoretical framework to study the physics of the chemical freeze-out at finite chemical potential (baryon number density). At very low temperature, the mixing of degenerate quark colors produces an additional value of the entropy. It is called the quantum entropy. It is different from the ’traditional’ thermal entropy. Taking this value into account, Dr. Tawfik got a remarkable picture of the confinement itself and the color-superconductivity at very high pressure (baryon number density). Furthermore, we determined a critical value for the chemical potential (baryon number density), μq = 290 MeV, at with a transition from quark matter to color-superconductivity phase takes place. Prediction of a "quantum" phase transition. At a critical temperature smaller than the quark mass divided by the quantum entropy there is a special phase transition. Crossing this critical value, one crosses between the "classical" and "quantum" worlds or between quantum correlated and quantum non-correlated systems. The main scientific contributions can be shortly summarized as follows. Mapping up the QCD phase diagram Mapping up the chemical freeze-out curve Determining the quantum entropy of quark matter Localizing the quantum phase transition
|