Dr. Shira Chapman (ד״ר שירה צ׳פמן)
Department of Physics
Ben Gurion University of the Negev
About me:
I am a senior lecturer at the physics department at Ben-Gurion University since January 2021. Prior to that, I was a postdoctoral fellow at the university of Amsterdam and at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Canada. I received my PhD from Tel Aviv University under the supervision of Yaron Oz.
My research interests range from quantum field theory to quantum gravity, holography and the AdS/CFT correspondence. More specifically, I study the relation between information processing in quantum mechanical systems and the way black holes process information of objects which fall inside. I am also currently interested in the study of interfaces and defects in conformal field theories.
I have recently won an ERC starting grant with a project proposing to use the tools of holography and quantum information to study quantum gravity in the expanding universe.
Contact Details
A little bit more about my research
I investigate links between black holes and quantum information. Black holes are fascinating objects. The geometry surrounding them is so curved that the outside observer cannot see inside. Recent research reveals that there is a link between black holes and quantum information: apparently the way black holes process information that enters them is similar to the way information is being processed in quantum systems. I am investigating these links, with a focus on the subject of quantum computational complexity. Quantum complexity is the theory within quantum information physics which estimates the difficulty of constructing quantum states from basic operations and is of relevance in recent attempts to construct quantum computers. Complexity has some surprising links to black holes. It turns out that complexity encodes the geometry behind the horizon of black holes and in particular can explain why their interior keeps growing for a very long time.
Want to learn more? Here is a good place to start:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-black-hole-interiors-grow-forever-20181206/
And here are talks from a conference on this subject which we organized in 2020