Aharon Kapitulnik

Last updated
Aharon Kapitulnik
Born1953
Nationality Israel, United States
Alma mater Tel Aviv University
Known for High Temperature Superconductivity
Quantum Phase Transitions
AwardsHeike Kamerlingh-Onnes Prize (2009)
Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize (2015)
Scientific career
Fields Experimental physics
Institutions Stanford University
Doctoral advisor Guy Deutscher
Doctoral students

Aharon Kapitulnik (born 1953) is an Israeli-American experimental condensed matter physicist working at Stanford University. He is known primarily for his work on strongly correlated electron systems, low dimensional electronic systems, unconventional superconductors, topological superconductors, superconductivity and magnetism, transport in bad metals and precision measurements. [1]

Contents

Education and career

Kapitulnik studied physics at Tel Aviv University in Israel (BA 1978, PhD 1983). After completing his doctoral studies under supervision of Guy Deutscher on the physics of disorder he moved to United States to work on polymers as a postdoc scholar in the group of Alan Heeger at UC Santa Barbara. In 1985 he joined the faculty of the Department of Applied Physics of Stanford University where he became a Professor Applied Physics and Physics in 1994. [2]

At Stanford, Kapitulnik formed a close collaboration with Theodore Geballe and Malcolm Beasley known collectively as the "KGB group". [3] Many of its graduates went on to establish successful academic careers in US and around the world. [4] [5]

Awards

Kapitulnik is the Theodore and Sydney Rosenberg Professor in Applied Physics at Stanford University [6] and the Sackler Professor by Special Appointment at Tel Aviv University. [7] He is a Member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He was awarded the 2015 Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize of the American Physical Society for the "discovery and pioneering investigations of the superconductor-insulator transition, a paradigm for quantum phase transitions" [8] and 2009 Heike Kamerlingh-Onnes Prize for "seminal studies of time-reversal-symmetry breaking effects in unconventional superconductors using magneto optics". [9]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Superconductivity</span> Electrical conductivity with exactly zero resistance

Superconductivity is a set of physical properties observed in certain materials where electrical resistance vanishes and magnetic fields are expelled from the material. Any material exhibiting these properties is a superconductor. Unlike an ordinary metallic conductor, whose resistance decreases gradually as its temperature is lowered, even down to near absolute zero, a superconductor has a characteristic critical temperature below which the resistance drops abruptly to zero. An electric current through a loop of superconducting wire can persist indefinitely with no power source.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Heike Kamerlingh Onnes</span> Dutch physicist, Nobel prize winner (1853–1926)

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of superconductivity</span>

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Malcolm Roy Beasley is an American physicist. He is professor emeritus of applied physics at Stanford University. He is known for his research related to superconductivity.

Guy Deutscher is a professor emeritus of physics at Tel Aviv University, Israel. His area of research is experimental solid-state physics and superconductivity. He completed his dissertation under the direction of the theoretical physicist Pierre Gilles de Gennes at the University of Paris-Sud in 1967 as a member of "the Orsay group on superconductivity".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shoucheng Zhang</span> Chinese-American physicist

Shoucheng Zhang was a Chinese-American physicist who was the JG Jackson and CJ Wood professor of physics at Stanford University. He was a condensed matter theorist known for his work on topological insulators, the quantum Hall effect, the quantum spin Hall effect, spintronics, and high-temperature superconductivity. According to the National Academy of Sciences:

He discovered a new state of matter called topological insulator in which electrons can conduct along the edge without dissipation, enabling a new generation of electronic devices with much lower power consumption. For this ground breaking work he received numerous international awards, including the Buckley Prize, the Dirac Medal and Prize, the Europhysics Prize, the Physics Frontiers Prize and the Benjamin Franklin Medal.

Theodore Henry Geballe was an American physicist who was a professor of applied physics at Stanford University. He was known for his work on the synthesis of novel materials of interest to several areas of physics and many interdisciplinary sciences.

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Gilbert "Gil" George Lonzarich is a solid-state physicist and Emeritus Professor of the University of Cambridge. He is particularly noted for his work on superconducting and magnetic materials carried out at the Cavendish Laboratory.

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Peter J. Hirschfeld is an American physicist, currently a distinguished professor at the University of Florida and an Elected Fellow of the American Physical Society. His lab is studying the problems of modern many-body theory associated with superconductivity and quantum materials.

Mohit Randeria is a US-based Indian condensed matter physicist and a professor of physics at Ohio State University. Known for his research on condensed matter theory and superconductivity, Randeria is an elected fellow of the American Physics Society. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards, for his contributions to physical sciences in 2002. He was awarded the 2002 ICTP Prize of the International Center for Theoretical Physics, Trieste and the 2022 John Bardeen Prize.

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The Heike Kamerlingh Onnes Prize was established in 2000, under the sponsorship of Elsevier, by the organizers of the International Conference on the Materials and Mechanisms of Superconductivity (M2S). The prize is named in honor of Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, who discovered superconductivity in 1911. At each conference, the prize, which consists of 7500 € and a certificate, is presented to one or more physicists. If there are two or more recipients they share the money. The prize "recognizes outstanding experiments which illuminate the nature of superconductivity other than materials". The winners are selected by the members of the Kamerlingh Onnes Prize Committee, appointed by the conference organizers.

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References

  1. "Aharon Kapitulnik".
  2. "CV" (PDF). stanford.edu.
  3. "R. B. Laughlin Nobel autobiography". nobelprize.org.
  4. "KGB group alumni (incomplete)".
  5. "Kapitulnik group alumni".
  6. "Theodore and Sydney Rosenberg Professor". stanford.edu.
  7. "Sackler Professorship". tau.ac.il.
  8. "O. E. Buckley Prize". American Physical Society.
  9. "Kamerlingh-Onnes Prize". 2015-International Conference on Materials and Mechanisms of Superconductivity. Archived from the original on 2018-10-10. Retrieved 2018-03-01.