UVa Physics - Israel Klich’s Department Homepage

Israel Klich
Assistant Professor

PhD, 2004, Israel Institute of Technology

E-mail: ik3j@Virginia.EDU

Office: 311D Physics Building (924-6573)
(All phone numbers are area code 434, unless otherwise specified.)

Research Interests:

My main research interests lie at the crossroads of Physics and Mathematical Physics.

The understanding of non-classical correlations in many-body systems is a common quest for quantum information theory and condensed matter theory. A useful measure for such correlations is entanglement entropy. My work on this subject has been focused on understanding the scaling of entanglement entropy as well as finding possible experimentally observable consequences of it. A class of systems with non-classical correlations in which I am also interested are called topological phases. Such phases arise in certain lattice models and are conjectured to appear in fractional quantum hall systems. It has been suggested that such systems may provide a robust way of performing quantum computations. I am interested in understanding these systems, and in particular, their stability to perturbations.

Quantum fields subject to classical constraints:

Consider two mirrors placed parallel to each other in vacuum. A striking phenomena predicted by quantum theory is that these mirrors experience an attractive force due to zero point fluctuations of the electromagnetic field. The interest in this force, known as the Casimir force, first predicted in 1948, was revitalized in the last decade. Variants of this effect span different areas of physics: from high energy physics and cosmology to statistical mechanics and biophysics. The Casimir effect has been recently demonstrated in experiments and spurred active interest in the underlying theory as well as research into possible applications in Nano-technology. I have been working on various qualitative and quantitative aspects of this effect.

Quantum fields which are subject to time-dependent classical constraints are also of interest. Such systems are rapidly becoming an experimental possibility in atomic and condensed matter systems. In this area I have worked on such problems such as the theory of quantum quenches and coherent excitation of single particles from a fermion vacuum.

Selected Publications:

D. Gioev and I. Klich, “Entanglement entropy of fermions in any dimension and the Widom conjecture,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 100503 (2006)

O. Kenneth and I. Klich, “Opposites Attract - A Theorem About The Casimir Force,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 97 (2006) 160401

J. Keeling, I. Klich and L. S. Levitov, “Minimal excitation states of electrons in one-dimensional wires,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 116403 (2006)

I. Klich, C. Lannert, G. Refael, “Supercurrent survival under a Rosen-Zener quench of hard core bosons,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 205303 (2007)

I. Klich and L. S. Levitov, “Quantum Noise as an Entanglement Meter,” (arXiv:0804.1377)

Current and Recent Courses:

PHYS 5210: Theoretical Mechanics I (Lecturer) Fall

PHYS 7430: Electricity and Magnetism II (Lecturer) Spring

Israel Klich’s Personal Home Page.

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