Graduate Students

Name	Discipline/Position	Phone	Office
Romach Yoav	Condensed Matter Physics	02 6584 811	Bergman Bldg.
Pollak Ori	Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics	02 6585 129	Marks Bldg.
Pilnyak Yehuda	Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics	02 6584 473	Marks Bldg.
Padnos Dan	Astrophysics and Relativity
Orbach Nir	Nonlinear	02 6586 718	Levin 14
Ohayon Ben	Nuclear Hadronic and Few-Body Physics	02 6585 868	Kaplun Bldg.
Nussbaum Tomer	Astrophysics and Relativity
Mintz Gad	Biophysics and Interdisciplinary Research	02 6586 753	Silberman 3-306
Metzker Lior	Biophysics and Interdisciplinary Research	02 6585 783	Popick Bldg.
Meirzada Idan

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Upcoming Events

Tomorrow

Astrolunch: Santanu Mondal (BGU)
- Start time: 12:30pm
- End date: Tuesday, January 22nd
- End time: 01:30pm
- Title: Accretion and ejection around black hole binaries: the role of viscosity and cooling
  
  Abstract: Accreting black hole binaries (BHBs) are powerful X-ray emitters. The X-ray flux arises from two key accretion flow components: the geometrically thin standard accretion disk and its X-ray corona. The phenomenology of X-ray observations of BHBs is very rich and has been exhaustively studied. To date, however, there is a little agreement on the physics behind these accretion states. To go beyond the standard model of a stable accretion flow, with no corona and only a parametric viscosity of unknown origin, it is necessary to rely on a promising physical solution. Here I will discuss the flow solution to fit the observation of several black hole binaries from different satellites. The importance of the cooling and viscosity in triggering different spectral states will also be discussed.
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Thursday, January 24th

Special Condensed-Matter Seminar: "Different ground states of the transition-metal dichalcogenide TaS2"
- Start time: 12:00pm
- End date: Thursday, January 24th
- End time: 01:15pm
- Lecturer: Amit Ribak, ARPES Group, Department of Physics,
  Technion - Israel Institute of Technology
  
  Abstract:
  Low dimensional materials have been a major subject of interest in recent years. In particular, the transitions metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), quasi-2D layered materials with weak van der Waals coupling between layers, received a lot of attention. TMDs exhibit strong electron-electron and electron-phonon interactions that lead to complicated phase diagrams showing a variety of ground states.
  
  In this work we explore the different ground states of the highly polymorphic TMD TaS2. We have characterized its physical properties using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES), muon-spin relaxation (muSR) and electrical transport measurements. In this talk I will describe the crystal structure and its physical properties. I will show that the common understanding of the insulating ground state of 1T-TaS2 as a realization of Mott insulator on a triangular lattice might be wrong. Next, I will describe a superconducting (SC) phase of TaS2. The properties of this SC were thoroughly investigated in variety of methods. Remarkably, it was found to break time-reversal symmetry (TRS) which suggest an unconventional, chiral SC.
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Biophysics Seminar: "The genomic landscape of microsatellite unstable tumors, detection and prevention"
- Start time: 02:00pm
- End date: Thursday, January 24th
- End time: 03:30pm
- Lecturer: Yosef Maruvka, Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Cancer Research, Charlestown, Massachusetts, USA. Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.Abstract:Many tumor types contain a subtype with a deficiency in the DNA mismatch repair mechanism. These tumors have an increased rate of insertions and deletions (indels) in the repetitive loci of the genome called microsatellites, leading to what is called microsatellite instability (MSI). I developed a tool to read these difficult-to-read regions, called MSMuTect, that was able to find many indels missed by the previous tools, with medical import, as described below. I also found that different tissue types have different patterns of indels in microsatellite loci, and developed a stochastic-process model to explain these differences.MSI tumors received attention recently, as the FDA approved a new immunotherapy PD-1/PD-L1 blockade treatment for all MSI tumors regardless of their tissue type. However, only about half of the MSI cases respond to immunotherapy. I demonstrated that it is the number of microsatellite indels that can predict the tumor response to immunotherapy.Furthermore, using MSMuTect I was able to analyze the details of the mutations and to find new cancer genes in MSI tumors. I was also able to leverage the unique features of MSI tumors in order to detect MSI tumors from cell-free DNA shed by tumors into the bloodstream.By way of conclusion, I will describe an ongoing effort that uses the microsatellite indels that we found using MSMuTect to generate a preventive treatment for the hereditary version of MSI tumors called Lynch syndrome.
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Sunday, January 27th

Special quantum optics seminar: "Josephson Photonics: Quantum Optics meets Quantum Electronics"
- Start time: 12:00pm
- End date: Sunday, January 27th
- End time: 01:30pm
- Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Joachim Ankerhold, Ulm University, Institute for Complex Quantum Systems, GermanyAbstract:Real quantum systems never live in isolation but are embedded in surrounding media. An impressive example is cavity quantum electrodynamics and its more recent realization circuit-QED, where `artificial atoms' in microwave cavities are implemented with superconducting circuits. Quantum electrodynamics, however, implies the interaction of bosonic with fermionic matter in general. For the latter, fascinating progress has been achieved in the field of quantum electronics to control charge transfer down to the level of individual charge carriers. Activities to combine these two previously almost distinct fields, quantum optics and quantum electronics, have appeared only very recently with the advent of Josephson photonics. This opens a new playground to study a wealth of phenomena far from equilibrium including non-classical light sources, ultra-strongcharge-light interactions, nonlinear quantum oscillators, and quantum phase transitions insteady state. In this talk I will discuss experimental developments in line with the theoretical background.Additional details of the seminar, can be found at the following link
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Special Condensed-Matter Seminar: "A new form of ergodicity breaking from quantum many-body scars"
- Start time: 02:00pm
- End date: Sunday, January 27th
- End time: 03:30pm
- Lecturer: Maksym Serbyn
  
  Abstract:
  The statistical mechanics description of many-particle systems rests on the assumption of ergodicity, the ability of a system to explore all allowed configurations in the phase space. For quantum many-body systems statistical mechanics predicts the equilibration of highly excited non-equilibrium state towards a featureless thermal state. Hence, it is highly desirable to explore possible ways to avoid ergodicity in quantum systems. Many-body localization presents one generic mechanism for a strong violation of ergodicity relying on the presence of quenched disorder. In my talk I will discuss a different mechanism of the weak ergodicity breaking relevant for the experimentally realized Rydberg-atom quantum simulator[1]. This mechanism arises from the presence of special eigenstates in the many-body spectrum that are reminiscent of quantum scars in chaotic non-interacting systems[2]. In the single-particle case, quantum scars correspond to wave functions concentrated in the vicinity of unstable periodic classical trajectories. I will demonstrate that many-body scars appear in the Fibonacci chain, a model with a constrained local Hilbert space which can be realized by a Rydberg chain. The quantum scarred eigenstates are embedded throughout the otherwise thermalizing many-body spectrum but lead to direct experimental signatures, as I show for periodic recurrences that reproduce those observed in the experiment[1]. Finally, I will construct the weak deformation of the Rydberg chain Hamiltonian that makes revivals virtually perfect [3]. I will conclude with discussing a new opportunities for the creation of novel states with long-lived coherence in systems that are now experimentally realizable and possible generalizations of these results.
  
  [1] Bernien, H. et al., Nature 551, 579–584 (2017), arXiv:1707.04344
  
  [2] C. J. Turner, A. A. Michailidis, D. A. Abanin, M. Serbyn, Z. Papić, Nature Physics (May 2018), arXiv:1711.03528 and Phys. Rev. B 98, 155134 (2018) arXiv:1806.10933
  [3] S. Choi, C. J. Turner, et al. arXiv:1812.05561
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