Prof. Jayendra Jain, Prof. Moti Haiblum and Prof. James Eisenstein won the prestigious award for their contributions to understanding the unique properties of two-dimensional electron systems in strong magnetic fields, and in particular in studying the fractional quantum Hall effect.
Prof. Dan Schachman, who serves as Chairman of the Wolf Prize Foundation, Prof. Moti Haiblum, President of the State Yitzhak Herzog and Minister of Education Yoav Kish. Photo by Press Office, Wolf Prize Foundation
The 2025 Wolf Prize in Physics is awarded jointly to Professors Jayendra Jain, Moti Haiblum, and James Eisenstein for their contributions to understanding the unique properties of two-dimensional electron systems in strong magnetic fields.
The three winners led to a deep understanding of the fractional quantum Hall effect. This phenomenon, which earned Maglia the Nobel Prize, occurs in a thin layer of electrons on which a strong magnetic field acts: the electric current appears to be carried by particles whose electric charge is a fraction of the electron charge.
Dr. Jain developed a theoretical framework for an intuitive understanding of the phenomenon, when he presented the particle with the "fractured" charge as a "composite fermion": an electron attached to an imaginary cylinder in which a magnetic flux is confined. Dr. Jain's revolutionary idea - a system in which a large number of electrons with strong interactions can be described by composite particles with weak interactions - fully explains the fractional Hall phenomenon. These composite particles are now known as "Jain states". Calculations made in the theoretical framework agreed remarkably with the results of numerical studies and explained experimental results, especially of experiments (in which the electron density matched the fractional value )5/2 that found behavior somewhat similar to that of a superconductor.
Dr. Heiblom has led the study of these exotic particles in the laboratory. By developing materials (semiconductors) of extremely high purity and using electron interference techniques, Heiblom's group has provided direct evidence for the existence of fractional charge and verified several fundamental predictions, such as the anomalous statistics (that which lies between the statistics of fermions and that of bosons). A key experiment in Heiblom's group unexpectedly discovered quantized heat conduction in a material in which the electron density corresponds to the fractional value .5/2. This experiment confirms the prediction that the composite fermions are Majorana fermions with the fractional charge, which has potential implications for quantum computing.
Dr. Eisenstein co-discovered the fractional quantum Hall state corresponding to the value 5/2 and continued to investigate exotic phases of two-dimensional electron systems. His research includes the discovery of an anisotropic state in which the resistance measured along a particular direction is significantly greater than the resistance in the direction perpendicular to it, a phenomenon reminiscent of a liquid crystal. The methods developed by Dr. Eisenstein for separating contact layers of single electrons made it possible to understand the coordinated motion of electron-hole pairs in the two layers. In this way, he experimentally observed Bose-Einstein condensation, a groundbreaking observation in its field.
The awarding of the 2025 Wolf Prize to these three physicists is a recognition of their extraordinary contributions to the study of quantum materials, and their far-reaching impacts on emerging quantum technologies.
Jayendra Jain
Jayendra Jain (born 1960, India) received his B.A. from Maharaja College, Jaipur (1979), his M.A. in Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur (1981), and his Ph.D. from Stony Brook University (1985) under the supervision of Professors Philip B. Allen and Stephen Kibelson. After postdoctoral periods at the University of Maryland (1988) and Yale University (1989), Jain returned to Stony Brook University as a faculty member in 1989. In 1998, he joined the University of Pennsylvania, where he continues his work to this day. He co-edited the book Fermions Composite Fractional Quantum Hall Effects: New Developments (Cambridge University Press, 2007) (World Scientific Press, 2020) with Bertrand Halperin.
James Eisenstein
James Eisenstein (born 1952, USA) received his bachelor's degree from Oberlin University, USA in 1974 and completed his doctorate in physics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1980. After serving as a lecturer at Williams University, he joined Bell Labs in 1983 as a member of the technical staff. In 1996, he accepted a faculty position at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and became the Frank J. Ruschk Professor of Physics and Applied Physics in 2005. He retired as Professor Emeritus in 2018 and ended his experimental research in 2021. Eisenstein has contributed to numerous committees of the National Research Council in the United States, including the Committee on Solid State Sciences and the Committee on Physics and Astronomy. In addition, he served as deputy editor of the Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics from 2017 to 2014.
Motty Highbloom
Moti Haiblum, 1947 (Israel) Physicist and electrical engineer, received a bachelor's degree from the Technion in 1973, a master's degree from Carnegie Mellon University, USA in 1974, and a doctorate in 1978 from the University of California, Berkeley. All in electrical engineering. He began his career at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, where he worked for 12 years. In 1990, Haiblum returned to Israel to establish the Submicron Center for Research on Miniaturized Semiconductor Devices at the Weizmann Institute of Science, where he has served as director since its inception. In addition, he founded and headed the Department of Condensed Matter Physics, and holds the Alex and Ida Sussman Chair for Submicron Research.
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