Amir, born in 1992, was raised in Herzliya. He completed his BSc in Physics and Electrical Engineering summa cum laude at the Technion in 2014. During his BSc studies, he joined the group of Prof. Yonina Eldar to research data reduction techniques in 3D ultrasound imaging and authored an IEEE journal paper. He then went on to serve for six years as a communications research engineer in the IDF Intelligence Corps in the framework of the “Psagot” academic reserve excellence program. Amir received his MSc in Physics summa cum laude from Tel Aviv University in 2021 under the supervision of Prof. Moshe Goldstein and is continuing under Prof. Goldstein’s supervision in pursuing his PhD.

Amir’s research focuses on quantum simulators of many-body systems. Quantum simulators are devices that emulate other quantum systems, which cannot be investigated using classical computers in a controllable and measurable way, and they thus open a window toward profound physical insights and unique states of matter. Amir develops theoretical methods to study simulators implemented in an environment of superconducting circuits, whose high degree of tunability allows one to observe a large variety of effects that are both exotic and fundamental to many-body physics. In his MSc work, Amir collaborated with the experimental group of Prof. Vladimir Manucharyan of the University of Maryland to demonstrate how a single photon, interacting with an artificial atom composed of superconducting elements, could be split into multiple photons with very high probability, a phenomenon that does not normally stem from regular photon-atom interactions. This collaboration of theory and experiment now aims to show how the photon-splitting effect, fascinating in its own right, could serve as a means to observe several exciting and long-sought-after phenomena of many-body systems. The tools crafted throughout the course of the research could find uses in many quantum field theoretical contexts, both in condensed matter and in high-energy systems.