Erez Zohar

Since the summer of 2019, I am at the Racah Institute of Physics, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, currently as an associate professor. My research focuses on the interface between quantum many body theories and quantum information and optics, mostly on developing tools for dealing with strongly correlated systems and their application to particle physics.

 

In 2009, I completed a combined BSc in physics and mathematics at the Tel Aviv University (TAU), which has equipped me, besides the basic knowledge and theoretical toolbox, also with a strong passion to quantum theory, and it was clear to me that I wanted to pursue a scientific career in this field.

 

I moved on to TAU's master program in physics, under the supervision of Prof. Benni Reznik, who introduced me to the beautiful world of quantum information. In parallel, studying particle physics courses, I realized that what I would really like to do was to combine quantum information with quantum field theory. After one year in the master's program, I switched to direct PhD track at TAU, embarking on a new research line: quantum simulation of lattice gauge theories – a field of which I was one of the pioneers back then, and to which I have been contributing continuously until this very day. During the PhD, which was supported by the prestigious Adams fellowship granted by the Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities, I was lucky to begin a collaboration with Prof. Ignacio Cirac, head of the theory division at MPQ -  the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, who has opened the door for me to the world of quantum optics and simulation.

 

In the beginning of 2014 I moved to Prof. Cirac's group at MPQ as a postdoc, including a two years period as an Alexander von Humboldt fellow. There I got familiar with the world of tensor networks and started working on generalizing them for the description of gauge theories. At MPQ I also had the opportunity to start developing an independent research career.

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In July 2019 I started my current career step – a senior lecturer (assistant professor) at the Racah Institute of Physics of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

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