# Valeri Frolov (physicist)

Valeri Frolov (born October 7, 1946) is a Russian-born Canadian theoretical physicist at the University of Alberta, Canada.

## Education

Valeri Frolov is a theoretical physicist specializing in the study of black holes. He was born and grew up in Moscow. He graduated from the Moscow State University and obtained his Master’s Degree in 1970. He received his first PhD degree (“Candidate of Sciences”) in 1973 and his second Doctor Degree (“Doctor of Sciences”) in 1980, both from P.N. Lebedev Physical Institute, Moscow, in theoretical physics.

## Work

His professional scientific career started in 1970 when he jointed the P.N. Lebedev Physical Institute. He was working there as an assistant professor, an associate professor, and a full professor (after 1980) until 1992. During the period 1985-1992 he was also a professor at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT). During 1992-1993 he spent one year as a visiting professor in the University of Copenhagen. In 1993 he moved to Edmonton, Canada where he became a full professor at the University of Alberta and received a Killam Memorial Chair position. He is working at this position till now.

## Research

Early in his career, Frolov studied white holes and semi-closed worlds. In 1970 he with his supervisor M.A. Markov published a paper where quantum particle creation by charged black holes was discussed. In 1980 he (with Gregory Vilkovisky) proposed a model of a regular evaporating black hole and presented a conformal diagram of its spacetime. Later his main interest focused on quantum effects in black hole. In 1987 he with Vitaly Ginzburg published a paper on the equivalence principle in quantum domain. In 1989 he with Kip Thorne published a paper discussing quantum effects near the horizon of a rotating black hole and proposed a state of the vacuum, which sometimes is refereed as the Frolov-Thorne vacuum. In 1994 he (with A. Barvinsky and A. Zelnikov) introduced a no-boundary wave function of a black hole and in 1996 he with (D. Fursaev and A. Zelnikov) proposed explanation of the black hole entropy based on Sakharov’s ideas of induced gravity. During the same period of time, he also studied cosmic strings (their interaction with black holes and quantum effects in the string background), wormholes and “time machines”, and regular black hole models. During the period 2006-2018 the main focus of his research was on hidden symmetries of four and higher dimension black holes. In collaboration with D. Kubizňák and P. Krtouš he demonstrated that all these solutions of the Einstein equations possessed a special geometrical object, called Killing-Yano tensor, which is responsible for a complete integrability of equations of motion of particles and separability of most interesting physical field equations in these spacetimes. More recently, he proposed an effective action for electromagnetic and gravitational spin-optics which is a generalization of the standard geometric optics and takes into account the interaction of the spin of these fields with the spacetime curvature.

## Awards and honors

* Killam Memorial Chair (from 1993 till now)
* In 2016, Markov Prize of INR of Russian Academy of Sciences for outstanding contribution to the black hole theory.

## Books

* Igor D. Novikov and Valeri P. Frolov, “Black Hole Physics” (Fundamental Theories of Physics, Volume 27, 341 pages, 1989. This is an English translation of the book in Russian, published in 1986 by Nauka Publ.
* Valeri P. Frolov and Igor D. Novikov, “Black Hole Physics: Basic Concepts and New Developments”, Fundamental Theories of Physics, Volume 96, 770 pages, 1998
* Valeri P. Frolov and Andrei Zelnikov, “Introduction to Black Hole Physics”, Oxford University Press, 488 pages, 2011

## Book chapter

* Frolov, V. P. The Newman-Penrose Method in the Theory of General Relativity. A chapter in: Basov, N.G. (eds) Problems in the General Theory of Relativity and Theory of Group Representations. The Lebedev Physics Institute Series. Springer, Boston, MA., pages 73–185, 1979