New perspectives on quantum many-body chaos

Andrei Bernevig is a Professor of Physics at Princeton University in the United States. He took his doctorate in 2006 at Stanford University, USA, and subsequently became a postdoc at the Princeton Center for Theoretical Physics at Princeton University, where he then held various professorships. Bernevig has received numerous prizes for young researchers, including the 2014 Sackler Prize, the Packard Fellowship, the 2016 New Horizons Prize and a 2017 Guggenheim Fellowship.

John Chalker is a Professor in the Physics Department at Oxford University and a Senior Research Fellow at St Hugh's College, Oxford. His research is in theoretical condensed matter physics with a current focus on many-body quantum systems far from equilibrium and on frustrated magnets. He has also worked extensively on disordered systems and on the quantum Hall effect. He received his B. A. in Physics and Theoretical Physics from Cambridge University and his D.Phil in Theoretical Physics from Oxford University. He held a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Heidelberg University, was a Lecturer in Physics at Southampton University, and has been a member of academic staff at Oxford University since 1991. He was the Institute of Physics Mott Lecturer in 2000 and was awarded a Research Prize by the A. von Humboldt Foundation in 2000, the Rayleigh Medal and Prize of the Institute of Physics in 2008, and the Dirac Medal and Prize of the Institute of Physics in 2018.

Professor Roderich Moessner is director at the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems. He has previously held faculty positions at Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris as well as at Oxford University, where he had also done his doctoral studies, which were followed by a postdoctoral appointment at Princeton University. His research interests are in theoretical condensed matter and statistical physics as well as quantum information theory. In particular, he investigates the physics of strong fluctuations in many-body systems, which may be due to frustration, competing degrees of freedom or quantum fluctuations. Among the prizes he has received are the Europhysics Prize of the Condensed Matter Division of the European Physical Society, as well as the Leibniz Prize of the German Science Foundation.

Maksym Serbyn is a theoretical physicists interested in properties of non-equilibrium quantum systems. Maksym got BS and MS degree from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and acquired his PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2014. After holding a Gordon and Betty Moore postdoctoral Fellowship at University of California, Berkeley from 2014-2017, he started his own group at IST Austria in July of 2017.

Lea F. Santos is a Professor of Physics at Yeshiva University. She has a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of São Paulo and postdoctoral experiences at Yale University, Michigan State University, and Dartmouth College. She is at the editorial board for New Journal of Physics and Physical Review E. She has worked for the APS Forum of Physics and Society, APS LeRoy Apker Award, and APS Metropolis Award. Her accolades include: Simons Fellow in Theoretical Physics, Outstanding Referee for the APS Journals, NSF CAREER Award, Cottrell College Science Award, Outstanding Junior Faculty Member Award, Cottrell and KITP Scholar, member of the U.S. delegation to the Third IUPAP International Conference on Women in Physics, and fellowships from the Brazilian and New Zealand governments.

Vedika Khemani is a theoretical physicist at Stanford University.  Her research interests in quantum dynamics, many-body quantum entanglement, and emergent properties of out-of-equilibrium quantum matter represent a burgeoning research direction of interest to several subfields including condensed matter physics, quantum information science and quantum engineering. After receiving her PhD from Princeton, she spent her postdoctoral years as a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows before joining Stanford as an Assistant Professor of physics in 2019. Her accolades include the William L. McMillan Award, the APS George E. Valley Jr. Prize, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, and an Early Career Award from the Department of Energy. 

The research of Michael Knap aims at a broad range of questions from condensed matter theory and bridges to quantum optics, atomic physics, and quantum information. Interactions and correlations in condensed matter systems often manifest in striking and novel properties. These properties emerge from collective behavior of the quantum particles. Many examples can be found in nature, including superconductors, quantum magnets and superfluids. The main focus of Knap's work has been on the development of analytical and numerical techniques to elucidate the effects of strong interactions. His research has addressed various questions in non-equilibrium quantum dynamics and transport in ultracold quantum gases and correlated quantum materials.

Michael Knap studied physics at Graz University of Technology, Austria. After obtaining his PhD he moved to Harvard University, USA, where he held a postdoctoral fellowship in the Condensed Matter Theory Group and at the Institute for Theoretical Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics (ITAMP). In 2015 Knap was awarded a Rudolf Mößbauer Tenure Track Assistant Professorship. 

Simone Warzel is a German mathematical physicist at the Technical University of Munich. 

She studied physics and mathematics at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg with a year at the University of Cambridge for Part III of the Mathematical Tripos, and earned her doctorate from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in 2001. Before joining the Technical University of Munich, she was an assistant professor at Princeton University.

Her research interests involve statistical mechanics and many-body problems in quantum mechanics, and in particular disordered quantum systems.

In 2009 she was awarded the Young Scientist Prize in Mathematical Physics. Warzel is a former Sloan Research Fellow and a von Neumann Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study. She was a plenary speaker at the 2012 International Congress on Mathematical Physics, and a speaker in the mathematical physics section of the 2018 International Congress of Mathematicians in Brazil.

Sebastian Müller is a Senior Lecturer in Mathematical Physics at the University of Bristol. In 2006 completed his PhD under the supervision of Fritz Haake at the University of Duisburg-Essen, about the periodic orbit approach to universality in quantum chaos. He joined Bristol in 2007, after a postdoc at Cambridge. His research interests include quantum chaos and its relation to random matrix theory, and semiclassical methods for many-particle systems as well as in mesoscopics.

Steve Zelditch is Professor of Mathematics at Northwestern University. He works in spectral geometry, complex geometry and mathematical physics, with a particular interest in asymptotics problems. He received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard in 1975, and his PhD from UC Berkeley in 1981 under the direction of Alan Weinstein. He was Ritt Assistant Professor at Columbia (1981-1985), and went from Assistant Professor to Professor of Mathematics at Johns Hopkins University (1986-2009), before moving to Northwestern in 2010. He was an invited speaker at the ICM in Beijing (2004) and has twice been an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematical Physics. He gave Current Developments in Mathematics lectures at Harvard in 2009 and an invited AMS national address in 2005. He served on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Centre de Recherches Mathematiques during the years 2004-2007. He has been on the editorial boards of Annales Scientifiques de l'École Normale Supérieure, American Journal of Mathematics, Journal of Mathematical Physics and is currently on the editorial boards of the Communications in Mathematical Physics and Analysis and PDE.

Tomaz Prosen has been a full professor of theoretical physics at University of Ljubljana since 2008, where he leads a group on nonequilibrium quantum and statistical physics. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1995 at the same university. His main current research interest is in fundamental problems in nonequilibrium dynamics and quantum many-body physics, where he applies methods of integrability, dynamical systems and ergodic theory, and random matrix theory.

Paul Fendley is Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College and Professor at the Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics, University of Oxford. His research is on statistical mechanics, condensed matter, and mathematical physics, with a particular emphasis on integrable systems and other non-perturbative approaches. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the Institute of Physics.

Professor Ehud Altman received his PhD from the Technion, Haifa in 2002. He was then a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard university for three years before joining the faculty of the Weizmann Institute of Science as a Yigal Alon fellow in 2005. He was promoted to the rank of Associate professor there in 2011. In 2010 he was awarded the young investigator prize from the Israel Physical Society and the Krill prize of the Wolf foundation. During the academic year 2012-2013 he was a Miller visiting professor at UC Berkeley. He joined the Physics department of UC Berkeley as a professor in the summer of 2016.

Professor Green has been chair of theoretical condensed matter physics at UCL since 2011. His research involves using field theoretical and tensor network approaches to understand and simulate many-body quantum phenomena both classically and on quantum computers. He is also interested in the insights that this may provide for quantum computation. The phenomena of quantum chaos are of particular interest both because of the fundamental challenge that they pose and the insights that they might give on the limitations of quantum simulation and computation.

Mari Carmen is a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching (Germany). She obtained a PhD in Physics from the University of Valencia in 2000 and a PhD in Computer Science by the Polytechnical University of Valencia in 2006. Her research focuses on the development and application of Tensor Network methods for the numerical simulation of quantum many body systems. In particular, she is interested in the investigation of non-equilibrium dynamical problems, and in applications of the toolbox to quantum many-body problems outside the realm of condensed matter physics, such as lattice gauge theories and classical stochastic models.

Brian Swingle is an assistant professor of physics at Brandeis University and adjunct assistant professor at the University of Maryland, College Park. He obtained his PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and held postdoctoral positions at Harvard University and Stanford University and a junior visiting professor position at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton. Swingle's research interests focus on the physics of quantum information especially in the context of quantum many-body systems and quantum gravity. He is a pioneer of the idea that space-time can emerge from quantum entanglement and introduced the use of tensor networks in the study of quantum gravity. Current interests include the efficient simulation of quantum many-body systems using entanglement-based methods and the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of quantum information.

Xiao-Liang Qi is a Professor at the Physics Department of Stanford University. He graduated from Tsinghua University in Beijing in 2007 and joined the Stanford faculty in 2010 after postdoctoral research at Stanford and UC Santa Barbara. Xiao-Liang's recent work focuses on the role of quantum entanglement in quantum many-body physics and quantum gravity. He has also worked on topological states of matter. 

Dr Ulrich Schneider is an experimental physicist studying quantum simulation and many-body physics using ultracold atoms in optical lattices. He is a reader in many-body physics at the Cavendish Laboratory of the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Jesus College Cambridge. Earlier positions include the Ludwig-Maximilians Universität in Munich and the Johannes-Gutenberg Universität in Mainz. 

He has worked extensively on non-equilibrium dynamics in optical lattices and the realisation of many-body localisation. Other works include studies of quantum transport, the dynamics of a quantum phase transition, fermionic Mott insulators, and Negative Absolute Temperatures. He also developed interferometric probes for topology and realized optical quasicrystals. He is the winner of the 2015 Rudolf-Kaiser prize, holds an ERC starting grant, and is part of the AION consortium, the DesOEQ programme grant and the UK Quantum Technology Hub in Computing & Simulation.

Monika Aidelsburger received her PhD at the LMU Munich in 2015. She has performed pioneering experiments on realizing artificial magnetic fields with ultracold atoms in optical lattices, including the first realization of the Hofstadter model with cold atoms and the measurement of the Chern-number with bosonic atoms. After a Postdoc-period at Collège the France in Paris, where she worked with uniform 2D Bose gases, she returned to LMU as a junior group leader in 2017. She received an ERC Starting Grant for simulating lattice gauge theories with ultracold fermionic Yb atoms and received a tenure-track professorship at LMU in 2019. Her main areas of research include quantum simulations of topological states of matter, lattice gauge theories, many-body localization and Hilbert-space fragmentation.

Igor Lesanovsky studied physics at the Universities of Rostock and Heidelberg (Germany). After having obtained his PhD from Heidelberg in 2006 stays as postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Electronic Structure and Laser in Heraklion (Greece) and the University of Innsbruck (Austria) followed. In 2009 he assumed a permanent lecturer position at the University of Nottingham (UK). Since 2019 he leads the Theoretical Atomic Physics and Synthetic Quantum Systems group at the University of Tübingen (Germany). He also holds a part-time professorial position at Nottingam. A large part of his research focusses on open quantum systems where he is interested in the investigation of collective phenomena, such as phase transitions and emergent slow dynamics. He has a track record in collaborating with experimentalists on questions relating to quantum optics, quantum information processing as well as on the exploration and exploitation of collective quantum phenomena in cold atomic gases.

Norman Yao’s research interests lie at the interface between atomic, molecular and optical physics, condensed matter, and quantum information science. In recent years, the synergy between these fields has been strengthened by a tremendous amount of experimental progress, which has made it possible to assemble complex, strongly interacting, quantum many-body systems from individual atoms, ions, molecules and photons. These advances have opened the door to realizing non-equilibrium phases of matter, to understanding the dynamics of quantum thermalization (and of its failure), and to measuring the intrinsic properties of topological phases. Dialogue between theory and experiment is especially crucial to addressing these questions and the Yao group employs a variety of theoretical, numerical and experimental tools. Dr. Yao received his PhD in 2014 and was subsequently a Miller Fellow at UC Berkeley, before joining the faculty of the physics department in 2016.