Steven M. Girvin is an American

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate ca ...

who is the Eugene Higgins Professor of

Physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which rel ...

at Yale University and who served as deputy provost for research at Yale from 2007 to 2017. Girvin is noted for his theoretical work on quantum many body systems such as the

fractional quantum Hall effect The fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE) is a physical phenomenon in which the Hall conductance of 2-dimensional (2D) electrons shows precisely quantized plateaus at fractional values of e^2/h. It is a property of a collective state in which elec ...

, and as co-developer of circuit QED, the application of the ideas of quantum optics to superconducting microwave circuits. Circuit QED is now the leading architecture for construction of quantum computers based on superconducting qubits.

Biography

Girvin was born in Austin,

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

in 1950 and went to high school in the small village of Brant Lake, New York. A graduate of

Bates College Bates College () is a Private college, private liberal arts college in Lewiston, Maine. Anchored by the Historic Quad, the Campus of Bates College, campus of Bates totals with a small urban campus which includes 33 Victorian Houses as some of th ...

and the

University of Maine The University of Maine (UMaine or UMO) is a public land-grant research university in Orono, Maine. It was established in 1865 as the land-grant college of Maine and is the flagship university of the University of Maine System. It is classifi ...

, Girvin received his Ph.D. in physics from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the n ...

in 1977 after completing a doctoral dissertation, titled "Topics in

condensed matter physics Condensed matter physics is the field of physics that deals with the macroscopic and microscopic physical properties of matter, especially the solid and liquid phases which arise from electromagnetic forces between atoms. More generally, the s ...

: the role of exchange in the lithium K edge and the fluorescence spectrum of heavily doped cadmium sulphide", under the supervision of

John J. Hopfield John Joseph Hopfield (born July 15, 1933) is an American scientist most widely known for his invention of an associative neural network in 1982. It is now more commonly known as the Hopfield network. Biography Hopfield was born in 1933 to Pol ...

. Girvin worked as a post-doctoral researcher at Indiana University, Bloomington and at Chalmers University of Technology in Goteborg, Sweden. He then held a staff scientist position at the

National Bureau of Standards The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical sci ...

(1979–87) and a held faculty position at Indiana University (1987-2001), before joining Yale as a Professor of Physics in 2001. Girvin's research focus has been theoretical study of collective quantum behavior in strongly correlated many body systems and their

phase transitions In chemistry, thermodynamics, and other related fields, a phase transition (or phase change) is the physical process of transition between one state of a medium and another. Commonly the term is used to refer to changes among the basic states ...

, he has worked on problems such as the

quantum Hall effect The quantum Hall effect (or integer quantum Hall effect) is a quantized version of the Hall effect which is observed in two-dimensional electron systems subjected to low temperatures and strong magnetic fields, in which the Hall resistance exhib ...

, the superconductor- insulator transition, and quantum spin chains. He works with experimentalists Robert Schoelkopf and

Michel Devoret Michel Devoret is a French physicist and F. W. Beinecke Professor of Applied Physics at Yale University. He also holds a position as the Director of the Applied Physics Nanofabrication Lab at Yale. He is known for his pioneering work on macrosco ...

on the engineering problem of building a

quantum computer Quantum computing is a type of computation whose operations can harness the phenomena of quantum mechanics, such as superposition, interference, and entanglement. Devices that perform quantum computations are known as quantum computers. Thoug ...

, and on developing " circuit QED" using superconducting electrical circuits. The group experimentally implemented the first all-electronic quantum processor and executed two-

qubit In quantum computing, a qubit () or quantum bit is a basic unit of quantum information—the quantum version of the classic binary bit physically realized with a two-state device. A qubit is a two-state (or two-level) quantum-mechanical system, ...

quantum algorithm In quantum computing, a quantum algorithm is an algorithm which runs on a realistic model of quantum computation, the most commonly used model being the quantum circuit model of computation. A classical (or non-quantum) algorithm is a finite seq ...

s in 2009.arXiv
/ref> Girvin co-edited the book "The Quantum Hall Effect", which has been translated to

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

, Chinese and Russian. Together with co-author Kun Yang, Girvin published the Cambridge Press textbook "Modern Condensed Matter Physics" in 2019. Girvin,

James P. Eisenstein James (Jim) P. Eisenstein was the Frank J. Roshek Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at the physics department of California Institute of Technology. Academic career Eisenstein received a doctoral degree from the University of California, ...

and Allan H. MacDonald won the 2007 Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize for their "Fundamental experimental and theoretical research on correlated many-electron states in low dimensional systems". In September 2020, Girvin was appointed as the founding director of the Co-design Center for Quantum Advantage (C²QA) located at Brookhaven National Laboratory, one of fiv
national quantum information science research centers
funded by the Department of Energy. C²QA comprises 88 principal investigators across 24 institutions who "do the basic research needed to make dramatic advances in the performance of quantum computer modules".

Honors

*Hedersdoktor (Honoris Causus Doctorate), Chalmers University of Technology (2017) *Shared the Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize (2007) *Foreign Associate of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (2007) *Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2007) *Member of the Connecticut Academy of Sciences (2007) *Member of the National Academy of Sciences (2006) *Member of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, ...

(2004) *

Fellow of the American Physical Society The American Physical Society honors members with the designation ''Fellow'' for having made significant accomplishments to the field of physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its moti ...

(1989)

References

External links

Department pagePersonal page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Girvin, Steven 1950 births Living people People from Austin, Texas People from Warren County, New York Yale University faculty 21st-century American physicists Bates College alumni Princeton University alumni Scientists from New York (state) Fellows of the American Physical Society Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize winners