
Ralf Rapp
Biography
Prof. Ralf Rapp received his PhD in 1996 from the University of Bonn (Germany); he did a postdoc at SUNY Stony Brook (1996-1999), held research assistant professor positions in Stony Brook (2001-2002) and at NORDITA (Copenhagen, 2002-2003), joined Texas A&M as assistant professor (2003), and subsequently became associate (2006) and full professor (2010). Prof. Rapp and his group conduct theoretical studies of spectral and transport properties of hadrons in hadronic matter and quarks in the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP), their relations to QCD phase transitions and observable signatures in heavy-ion collisions. They are also interested in color-superconducting cold dense quark matter and associated signatures in observables from compact ("neutron") stars, including mechanisms for gamma ray bursters.
Selected Publications
Ralf Rapp. “Fireball spectroscopy.” Nature Physics, 15(10), 990--991, Jul 2019.
Awards & Recognition
- APS Fellow (American Physical Society, 2014)
- Robert S. Hyer Award (TX Section of American Physical Society, 2009)
- Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award (Humboldt Foundation, 2007)
- NSF CAREER Award (National Science Foundation, 2004)
- University Professorship (Texas A&M University, 2020)
News Highlights
- Nathan Holt has completed his PhD degree (2016); thesis title: "Sum Rules and Thermal Photon Emission in Hadronic Matter".
- Shuai Liu has completed his PhD degree (2018); thesis title: "A Unified T-Matrix Approach to Quark-Gluon Plasma"
- Xiaojian Du has completed his PhD degree (2019); thesis title: "Quarkonium Transport Theory in Ultrarelativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions"
- Joseph Atchison has completed his PhD degree (2021); thesis title: "The Electric Conductivity of Hot Pion Matter"