Prize Recipient

Moty Heiblum
Department of Condensed Matter Physics, Braun Center for Sub Micron Research, Weizmann Institute of Science

"For discoveries, enabled by ingenious experimental methods, of novel quantum electronic phenomena in mesoscopic and quantum Hall systems, including observation and interpretation of one-electron and two-electron interference, charge fractionalization, and quantized heat conductance in fractional Hall states."

Moty Heiblum was formally trained in electrical engineering, receiving B.Sc. in Technion (Israel, 1973) and Ph.D. in UC Berkeley (USA, 1978), joining after it the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center (1978). Realizing the lack of high purity materials, he studied and employed MBE-growth of GaAs-based heterostructures. Developing a novel Hot-Electron Transistor, he employed it as an electron energy spectrometer, and observed first-ever ballistic transport of electrons in a solid. In 1990 he joined the Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel), to conceive and found the Braun Center for Submicron Research and the Department of Condensed Matter Physics. Heiblum’s studies are concentrated in quantum behavior of electrons in high purity mesoscopic materials, and in particular in the quantum Hall effect (QHE) regime. Noted are: novel electronic interferometers – demonstrating one-electron and two-electron interference; which-path detectors – allowing to turn 'on and off' electrons’ coherence; detection of fractional charges via sensitive shot noise measurements; and observation of quantized heat flow in the fractional abelian and non-abelian states in the QHE regime. Heiblum was awarded the IBM Outstanding Innovation Award (1986), the Rothschild Prize (2008), and the EMET prize (2013). He is a Member of the Israel Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Physical Society, and a life fellow of IEEE. Heiblum received three consecutive Advanced ERC Grants.

Nandini Trivedi (Chair), Pablo Jarillo Herrero (‘20 recipient), Piers Coleman, Arthur Hebard, Charlie Kane, Gene Mele