Research Interests

I work on quantum information and quantum gravity.

I was born and grew up in Latvia, which was then actually a part of the USSR. The most significant (to date) part of my life I spent in Israel, where I  completed both the undergrad and graduate studies at the Technion in Haifa. After finishing a Ph.D. in 2003 with Asher Peres as a thesis advisor, I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Perimeter Institute in Canada (2003-2006), before joining the QISS team at Macquarie.

Apart from physics my interests include sport and reading. Thai boxing, swimming and diving are among the former. Mythology, comparative religion and Ancient, Medieval and Far Eastern history feature among the latter.

My current research interests are spread between theory of open systems, quantum detection and estimation theory, quantum process tomography, relativistic aspects of quantum information, black hole physics and quantum gravity. This list appears to consist of a variety of unrelated items, but it has a common theme and a shared technical side. This common theme actually underlines the entire quantum information science ---we realize that information is physical, so its processing is a branch of physics, while study of physics involves the study of information. The technical cohesion follows from a central role that entanglement and a variety of entropy-like quantities that are used to characterize it are playing in my research. Quantum entanglement is a manifestation of correlations stronger than allowed by the laws of classical mechanics. It is both one of the essential resources for quantum information processing and an important feature in other areas of physics. My research is very much related to the investigation of its properties in variety of systems.

I am particularly interested in the following topics:

1. Non-completely positive dynamics & its applications to gate tomography
2. Localization of relativistic particles
3. Unitarity and entanglement in black hole evaporation
4. Entropic bounds in quantum fields and gravity
5. Canonical quantum gravity and black hole physics

 I am one of the organizers of Asher Peres International School of Physics, that will be held in Sydney on November 17-21. It is aimed at honours and early graduate students. The school will provide lectures from leading researchers on topics ranging from experimental foundations of quantum science through to quantum information and quantum gravity.Participation is free, with accomodation and meals included. Only 40 students will be accepted.

Register at the school's website

 Teaching:

• PHYS 304 Quantum mechanics 2
• PHYS 378 GR part