Leon Balents

Professor Leon Balents is the Professor of Physics and Permanent Member at Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Leon Balents' work has ranged from studies of 2-leg Hubbard ladders applied to carbon nanotubes to frustrated quantum magnetic systems with exotic spin liquid phases and quantum phase transitions. His theoretical work on magnetic materials showed that the large degeneracy of states associated with localized moments and competing interactions can lead to the long sought spin-liquid state. He has also made profound contributions to topologically ordered states in electronic and magnetic systems, identifying a topological invariant in three dimensional topological insulators and pioneering numerical approaches to identify topological order employing entanglement entropy.