Research

Achim Richter is a very distinguished experimental physicist with seminal research contributions in the fields of nuclear reactions with light and heavy ions, nuclear structure and electromagnetic interactions in nuclei, nuclear astrophysics, atomic physics and accelerator physics.

Since 1974 he is professor at the Technical University of Darmstadt (TUD). There in the Institute of Nuclear Physics, in the early 90s he has constructed and built the S-DALINAC, the first superconducting electron linear accelerator at a university laboratory in Europe. Together with his students and collaborators he also realized at the S-DALINAC in 1996 the first Free-Electron-Laser in Germany.

Besides a broad spectrum of nuclear physics research which led in the mid eighties to the discovery of the so called "scissors mode" in deformed atomic nuclei - this mode subsequently has become a paradigm for similar elementary excitation modes in other many-particle quantum systems like ultracold gases - he has lately become very interested into phenomena of quantum and wave dynamical chaos. Also in this relatively young field he has made important major experimental contributions to understand the spectral behaviour of chaotic quantum systems and of chaotic scattering.

The Institute of Nuclear Physics of the TUD belongs now indeed to the most notable institutes of its kind worldwide.