• Anselm made significant contributions to quantum field theory and the theory of strong and weak interactions. He actively worked with graduate students and many of his students became internationally recognized theorists in their own right. : In the beginning of 1950s
particle physics theory was in deep crisis after L. Landau,
A. Abrikosov and
I. Khalatinikov discovered that quantum field theory predicts nullification of interaction in
quantum electrodynamics. This so called «
Moscow Zero» means that quantum field theory, the principal tool of theoretical research in particle physics is not self-consistent. Landau and his school put forward widely accepted arguments that the «Moscow zero» takes place in any field theory and thus any field theory is doomed. In 1959 young Anselm discovered that there is no nullification of interaction in a certain two-dimensional model with four-fermion interaction. This means that the «Moscow zero» is non-universal and self-consistent quantum field theories do exist. Anselm’s discovery opened a path to constructing a field theory of fundamental particles and their interactions. In modern language Anselm was the first to discover a phenomenon later called «
asymptotic freedom» and fundamentally important for the modern quantum field theory: : Still, this first major achievement of young A. Anselm did not receive due attention of the Soviet physicists, and 15 years later the "asymptotic freedom” phenomenon was re-discovered by western scientists. • In the early 1960s in search for an alternative to quantum field theory physicists turned to the theory of complex angular momenta. This approach is based on analyticity and unitarity. The principal contributions to the development of this approach were made by V. Gribov and his colleagues, including Anselm. Into cooperation with Y. Azimov, V. Anisovich, G. Danilov, I. Dyatlov, V. Schekhter Anselm obtained the results that received worldwide renown. Among these results are • The theory of production of three particles near the threshold; • Studies of Regge poles in perturbation theory; • Prediction of the interference minima in a cross section of elastic collisions at large angles, and much more. • At a later stage the field theory took again the central stage in the theoretical research. Anselm started to work on gauge theories, the theoretical basis of the future Standard Model of strong, electromagnetic and weak interactions. His emphasis was on the problem of spontaneous symmetry breaking in gauge theories interactions. A. Anselm proposed a new mechanism of symmetry breaking in electroweak theory due to “radiative” interaction of heavy quarks. In collaboration with his students D. Diakonov, A. Johansen, and N. Uraltsev he explored whether the asymptotic freedom of gauge theory can be combined with the
Higgs phase which prevents the infrared pole, whether an electron mass can be obtained as a radiative correction to the muon mass, whether the observed experimentally CP violation is compatible with the CP violation induced by the complexity of the Higgs sector. • Together with N. Uraltsev, Anselm proposed and studied in detail possible existence of massless or very light Higgs particles. Anselm invented a new kind of one or more massless Goldstone bosons which he christened «arions». Would these particle be found in nature is today an open question. • Independently of the better known work of the future Nobel Prize winner
Gerard 't Hooft Alexey Anselm simultaneously put forth the principle of the quantum anomalies cancellation at the level of constituent particles, • In the last decade of the 20th century, the most cited works by Anselm (partly done jointly with A. Johansen, L. Lipatov, M. Ryskin, A. Shuvaev) were devoted to production of coherent pion fields in ultrarelativistic collisions of heavy ions. These fields are known today as "disoriented chiral condensate" (DCC). The possibility of DCC existence is widely discussed in connection with the experiments at the
Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at the
Brookhaven National Laboratory. • Anselm (together with A. Johansen) suggested a natural dynamic mechanism explaining the doublet-triplet hierarchy within supersymmetric grand unified models of electroweak and strong interactions. He has made important contributions to the understanding of the axial anomalies in supersymmetric theories. ==Social activities==