Michael Levin (physicist)

Michael Levin is an American theoretical solid-state physicist.

Levin received his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Xiao-Gang Wen in 2006 . As a post-doctoral student , he was a Junior Fellow at Harvard. He is an Associate Professor at the University of Chicago .

He deals with topological phases in many-body systems, including symmetry-protected topological phases (SPT). In 2009 he and Ady Stern constructed topological insulators with fractionated ( Anyon ) statistics and fractional quantum numbers.

He also deals with the interface between many-body systems and quantum information theory, for example the simulation of quantum mechanical systems on classical computers, and the nature of quantum entanglement in many-body systems.

In 2019 he received the Simons Foundation Award. For 2020 he received the New Horizons in Physics Prize for decisive contributions to the understanding of the topological states of matter and their connections to one another (laudation).

Fonts (selection)

• Protected edge modes without symmetry , Phys. Rev. X, Volume 3, 2013, p. 021009, Arxiv
• with Z.-C. Gu: Braiding statistics approach to symmetry-protected topological phases , Phys. Rev. B, Volume 86, 2012, p. 115109, Arxiv
• with A. Stern :. Fractional topological insulators , Phys. Rev. Lett., Vol. 103, 2009, p. 196803, Arxiv
• with Cody P. Nave: Tensor renormalization group approach to 2D classical lattice models , Phys. Rev. Lett., Vol. 99, 2007, p. 120601, Arxiv
• with X.-G. Wen: Detecting topological order in a ground state wave function , Phys. Rev. Lett., Vol. 96, 2006, p. 110405, Arxiv
• with Xiao-Gang Wen: Fermions, strings, and gauge fields in lattice spin models , Phys. Rev. B, Volume 67, 2003, p. 245316, Arxiv

Web links

• Homepage at the University of Chicago