 | Steven M. Girvin |
Steven M. Girvin, who has been designated the Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics, is a theoretical physicist who studies the quantum mechanics of large collections of atoms, molecules and electrons that are found in superconductors, magnets and transistors.
Of particular interest to Girvin is the engineering question of whether it is possible to build a quantum computer. He is part of a team of Yale scientists (including Michel Devoret and A. Douglas Stone who are engaged in that endeavor.
Girvin, along with Devoret and Professor Robert Schoelkopf, are constructing superconducting circuit elements that might someday form the basis for a quantum computer -- which could, in principle, solve problems that are impossible on ordinary computers. The scientists' work on these circuit devices will improve understanding of the connections between the microscopic quantum world and the macroscopic classical world of everyday experience.
In addition, Girvin is interested in quantum many-body physics, and quantum and classical phase transitions, particularly in disordered systems. Much of his work has been on the Quantum Hall effect, but he has also worked on the superconductor-insulator transition, the vortex glass transition in high Tc superconductors, superfluid helium in fractal aerogel, the Anderson localization problem, the Coulomb blockade problem in mesoscopic device physics, and on quantum spin chains.
The author or co-author of over 150 research papers, Girvin is co-editor of the book "The Quantum Hall Effect" (with R.E. Prange), which has been translated into Japanese, Russian and Chinese.
Girvin holds a B.S. in physics from Bates College (in 1971) and master's degrees in physics from the University of Maine (1973) and Princeton University (1974), where he also received his Ph.D. (1977). He did postdoctoral research at Indiana University and -- with Professor G.D. Mahan -- at Chalmers University in Göteborg, Sweden. He served as a physicist at the National Bureau of Standards 1979-1987, earning a bronze medal for superior federal service from the Department of Commerce in 1983. Girvin joined the faculty of Indiana University in 1987 and was named a Distinguished Professor of Physics there in 1992. He came to Yale in 2002 with affiliations in the Departments of Physics and Applied Physics.
The Yale physicist is co-founder of the Boulder Summer School in Condensed Matter and Materials Physics in Colorado. Girvin is also a fellow of the American Physical Society.
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