About

Steven Girvin is the Sterling Professor of Physics at Yale University and a Professor of Applied Physics. He earned his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Princeton University in 1977, following his undergraduate studies at Bates College and a master's degree from the University of Maine. Girvin joined the Yale faculty in 2001 and has served as Yale’s Deputy Provost for Research from 2007 to 2017, overseeing strategic planning for research across Yale. From 2019 to 2021, he was the founding director of the Co-Design Center for Quantum Advantage, a national quantum information science research center funded by the Department of Energy. His research areas include condensed matter physics, with a focus on theoretical aspects, and he has made significant contributions to the development of quantum computing architectures, notably co-developing circuit QED with colleagues Michel Devoret and Robert Schoelkopf, which has become the industrial standard for superconducting quantum computers. Girvin is a Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and a Member of the US National Academy of Sciences. His work has been recognized with awards such as the Oliver E. Buckley Prize of the American Physical Society in 2007 and an honorary degree from Chalmers University of Technology in 2017.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Quantum mechanics
• Physics
• Statistical physics
• Software engineering
• Engineering physics
• Computational science
• Algorithm
• Engineering
• Systems engineering

Selected publications

• Dataset for "Systematic Construction of Time-Dependent Hamiltonians for Microwave-Driven Josephson Circuits"

  Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2026-03-22

  datasetOpen access

  Dataset for figures in the manuscript titled "Systematic Construction of Time-Dependent Hamiltonians for Microwave-Driven Josephson Circuits"

  PublisherDOI

• Dataset for "Systematic Construction of Time-Dependent Hamiltonians for Microwave-Driven Josephson Circuits"

  Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2026-04-03

  datasetOpen access

  Dataset for figures in the manuscript titled "Systematic Construction of Time-Dependent Hamiltonians for Microwave-Driven Josephson Circuits"

  PublisherDOI

• Prospects for a Solid-State Nuclear Clock

  ArXiv.org · 2025-11-17

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Motivated by recent experimental breakthroughs toward a realization of a solid-state Thorium-229 nuclear clock, we review the technology, basic physics motivation, and limitations of the present generation of atomic clocks. We then discuss prospects for a new generation of clocks based on an anomalous low-energy 8.4 eV nuclear transition in Th-229, with an extremely long lifetime of 641 seconds when doped into CaF crystals. To realize such solid-state nuclear clocks one must confront basic nuclear, AMO, and solid state physics questions. Key challenges are understanding and minimizing the effects of inhomogeneous broadening, associated with strains and electric field gradients due to both the Th dopants and intrinsic crystal defects.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Dataset for "Systematic Construction of Time-Dependent Hamiltonians for Microwave-Driven Josephson Circuits"

  Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2025-12-23

  datasetOpen access

  Dataset for figures in the manuscript titled "Systematic Construction of Time-Dependent Hamiltonians for Microwave-Driven Josephson Circuits"

  PublisherDOI

• Constrained many-body phases in a $\mathbb{Z}_2$-Higgs lattice gauge theory

  Desy publication database (The Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron) · 2025-03-05

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  We study the ground-state phase diagram of a one-dimensional $\mathbb{Z}_2$ lattice gauge theory coupled to soft-core bosonic matter at unit filling, inspired by the Higgs sector of the standard model. Through a combination of analytical perturbative approaches, exact diagonalization, and density-matrix-renormalization-group simulations, we uncover a rich phase diagram driven by gauge-field-mediated resonant pair hopping and the confinement of single particles. The pair hopping results in a bunching state with superextensive energy and macroscopic particle number fluctuations at strong electric field strengths and weak on-site interactions. The bunching state crosses over into a pair superfluid phase as the on-site interaction increases, characterized by a finite superfluid density and powerlaw-decaying pair correlations. At large on-site interaction strengths and driven by effective interactions induced by the gauge constraint, the superfluid transitions into an incompressible pair Mott insulator phase. At weak field strengths and on-site interactions, we find a plasma-like region, where single bosons exhibit large short-range correlations and the ground state is composed almost equally of states with even and odd local boson occupation. The presence of a bunching state with large number fluctuations, which is difficult to study using classical numerics, motivates experimental realizations in hybrid boson-qubit quantum simulation platforms such as circuit QED, neutral atoms, and trapped ions. Our findings highlight the rich interplay between gauge fields and soft-core bosonic matter.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Toward Mixed Analog-Digital Quantum Signal Processing: Quantum AD/DA Conversion and the Fourier Transform

  IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing · 2025-01-01 · 5 citations

  articleOpen access

  Signal processing stands as a pillar of classical computation and modern information technology, applicable to both analog and digital signals. Recently, advancements in quantum information science have suggested that quantum signal processing (QSP) can enable more powerful signal processing capabilities. However, the developments in QSP have primarily leveraged <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">digital</i> quantum resources, such as discrete-variable (DV) systems like qubits, rather than <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">analog</i> quantum resources, such as continuous-variable (CV) systems like quantum oscillators. Consequently, there remains a gap in understanding how signal processing can be performed on hybrid CV-DV quantum computers. Here we address this gap by developing a new paradigm of mixed analog-digital QSP. We demonstrate the utility of this paradigm by showcasing how it naturally enables analog-digital conversion of quantum signals— specifically, the transfer of states between DV and CV quantum systems. We then show that such quantum analog-digital conversion enables new implementations of quantum algorithms on CV-DV hardware. This is exemplified by realizing the quantum Fourier transform of a state encoded on qubits via the free-evolution of a quantum oscillator, albeit with a runtime exponential in the number of qubits due to information theoretic arguments. Collectively, this work marks a significant step forward in hybrid CV-DV quantum computation, providing a foundation for scalable analog-digital signal processing on quantum processors.

  PublisherDOI

• Quantum error correction of qudits beyond break-even

  Nature · 2025-05-14 · 38 citations

  articleOpen access

  Hilbert space dimension is a key resource for quantum information processing1,2. Not only is a large overall Hilbert space an essential requirement for quantum error correction, but a large local Hilbert space can also be advantageous for realizing gates and algorithms more efficiently3–7. As a result, there has been considerable experimental effort in recent years to develop quantum computing platforms using qudits (d-dimensional quantum systems with d > 2) as the fundamental unit of quantum information8–19. Just as with qubits, quantum error correction of these qudits will be necessary in the long run, but so far, error correction of logical qudits has not been demonstrated experimentally. Here we report the experimental realization of an error-corrected logical qutrit (d = 3) and ququart (d = 4), which was achieved with the Gottesman–Kitaev–Preskill bosonic code20. Using a reinforcement learning agent21,22, we optimized the Gottesman–Kitaev–Preskill qutrit (ququart) as a ternary (quaternary) quantum memory and achieved beyond break-even error correction with a gain of 1.82 ± 0.03 (1.87 ± 0.03). This work represents a novel way of leveraging the large Hilbert space of a harmonic oscillator to realize hardware-efficient quantum error correction. Quantum error correction of a logical qutrit and ququart were experimentally realized beyond the break-even point with the Gottesman–Kitaev–Preskill bosonic code.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Co-designing Spectral Transformation Oracles with Hybrid Oscillator-Qubit Quantum Processors: From Algorithms to Compilation

  PRX Quantum · 2025-10-30

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  We co-design a family of quantum eigenvalue transformation oracles that can be efficiently implemented on hybrid discrete- or continuous-variable (qubit or qumode) hardware. To illustrate the oracle’s representation-theoretic power and near-term experimental accessibility, we encode a Gaussian imaginary time-evolution spectral filter. As a result, we define a continuous linear combination of unitaries block encoding. Due to the ancillary qumode’s infinite-dimensional nature, continuous-variable qumodes constitute a powerful compilation tool for encoding continuous spectral functions without discretization errors while minimizing resource requirements. We then focus on the ubiquitous task of preparing eigenstates in quantum spin models. For completeness, we provide an end-to-end compilation which expresses high-level oracles in terms of an experimentally realizable instruction set architecture in both 1D and 2D. Finally, we examine the leading-order effects of physical errors and highlight open research directions. Our algorithms scale linearly with the spatial extent of the target system and are applicable to both near-term and large-scale quantum processors.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Prospects for a Solid-State Nuclear Clock

  Journal Club for Condensed Matter Physics · 2025-12-31

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  1. Frequency ratio of the 229mTh nuclear isomeric transition and the 87Sr atomic clock Authors: Chuankun Zhang, Tian Ooi, Jacob S. Higgins, Jack F. Doyle, Lars von der Wense, Kjeld Beeks, Adrian Leitner, Georgy A. Kazakov, Peng Li, Peter G. Thirolf, Thorsten Schumm, and Jun Ye Nature 633, pages 63–70 (2024), DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07839-6 2. Temperature […]

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Leveraging Hamiltonian simulation techniques to compile operations on bosonic devices

  Journal of Physics A Mathematical and Theoretical · 2025-02-13 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Circuit quantum electrodynamics enables the combined use of qubits and oscillator modes. Despite a variety of available gate sets, many hybrid qubit-boson (i.e. qubit-oscillator) operations are realizable only through optimal control theory, which is oftentimes intractable and uninterpretable. We introduce an analytic approach with rigorously proven error bounds for realizing specific classes of operations via two matrix product formulas commonly used in Hamiltonian simulation, the Lie–Trotter–Suzuki and Baker–Campbell–Hausdorff product formulas. We show how this technique can be used to realize a number of operations of interest, including polynomials of annihilation and creation operators, namely <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo stretchy="false">(</mml:mo> <mml:mi>a</mml:mi> <mml:msup> <mml:mo stretchy="false">)</mml:mo> <mml:mi>p</mml:mi> </mml:msup> <mml:mo stretchy="false">(</mml:mo> <mml:msup> <mml:mi>a</mml:mi> <mml:mo>†</mml:mo> </mml:msup> <mml:msup> <mml:mo stretchy="false">)</mml:mo> <mml:mi>q</mml:mi> </mml:msup> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> for integer <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>p</mml:mi> <mml:mo>,</mml:mo> <mml:mi>q</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> . We show examples of this paradigm including obtaining universal control within a subspace of the entire Fock space of an oscillator, state preparation of a fixed photon number in the cavity, simulation of the Jaynes–Cummings Hamiltonian, and simulation of the Hong-Ou-Mandel effect. This work demonstrates how techniques from Hamiltonian simulation can be applied to better control hybrid qubit-boson devices.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Condensed Matter Theory

  NSF · $540k · 2003–2007

• Condensed Matter Theory

  NSF · $570k · 2010–2014

• Condensed Matter Theory

  NSF · $660k · 2006–2010

• MRI: Acquisition of a High Performance Computational Cluster for Yale University

  NSF · $500k · 2008–2012

• Condensed Matter Theory

  NSF · $420k · 2013–2016

Frequent coauthors

• Robert Schoelkopf

  132 shared

• Michel Devoret

  90 shared

• Luigi Frunzio

  Yale University

  82 shared

• A. H. MacDonald

  59 shared

• Liang Jiang

  University of Chicago

  49 shared

• Alexandre Blais

  40 shared

• Jay Gambetta

  IBM (United States)

  36 shared

• Matthew P. A. Fisher

  36 shared

Labs

• Yale Quantum InstitutePI

Awards & honors

• Oliver E. Buckley Prize of the American Physical Society (20…
• Honorary degree from Chalmers University of Technology (2017…
• Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
• Member of the US National Academy of Sciences