Karyn Le Hur

CNRS Research Director

CPHT, Ecole Polytechnique, 91128 Palaiseau cedex, France
+33 1 69 33 42 67
[javascript protected email address]
Buliding 0, office 21

Research Interests

I am a theoretical physicist who is aiming to find solutions for questions in interdisciplinary domains associated to physics, condensed-matter and many-body systems, quantum information, nanoelectronics, quantum field theory, statistical physics, quantum optics and cold atoms.

I am born in Nantes and obtained a Master in theoretical physics at the university with advanced classes at IMN (Institute of Materials) created by Jean Rouxel. Then, I obtained a Diploma for advanced theoretical physics (DEA) at ENS Paris. I obtained a doctorate in theoretical physics at the laboratory LPS Orsay in 1998, under the supervision of Bernard Coqblin. I was also lucky to give a course on special relativity at University of Cergy-Pontoise. I was then post-doctoral fellow at ETH Zuerich in the group of T. Maurice Rice from 1998 to 2000. In 2000, I obtained a Maitre-Assistant position in the group of Markus Buettiker in Geneva. From 2002 to 2006, then I became the first assistant and tenure associate women professor in physics at the university of Sherbrooke in Canada and became a member of the Canadian Institute of Advanced Research in 2004. From 2006 to 2011, I joined Yale University in USA as an Associate Professor.

In 2012, I accepted a position of tenured CNRS Research Director. I keep my teaching activities as a professor PCC at Ecole Polytechnique 2012-2025 and then as a (titulaire) member of the admission Jury at Ecole Polytechnique for engineers (PSI and PC students).

As a remark, in my thesis, I worked on Majorana fermions in superconducting quantum wires EuroPhysics Letters (EPL 49, 768 (2000)) and predicted the possibility of a Majorana metal in 1D (Phys. Rev. B, 60 9116 (1999)), those articles were published in Zuerich. I also found a rigorous solution of the Kondo lattice in 1D for spins-1 impurities (Phys. Rev. Lett. 83, 848 (1999)). In 2026, I found that protected Majorana zero-energy fermions can also occur in s-wave superconducting wires through a magnetic impurity (Comptes Rendus. Physique, Volume 27 (2026), pp. 307-322)

Publications

Publications : https://arxiv.org/search/cond-mat?searchtype=author&query=Hur%2C+K+L

Google profile: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=9LsrbzAAAAAJ&hl=en

Selection of 10 Articles and Reviews

1-Topological Matter and Fractional Entangled Geometry through Light
Review:K. Le Hur, arXiv:2209.15381, 109 pages, submitted to Physics Reports September 2023
Related to Quantum Entangled Fractional Topology and Curvatures
J. Hutchinson and K. Le Hur, Communication Physics 4, 144 (2021), Nature Journal

Interacting topological quantum aspects with light and geometrical functions
Karyn Le Hur, Physics Reports, volume 1104, Pages 1-42, 2025

2- Phase-Coherent Dynamics of Quantum Devices with Local Interaction
Review: M. Filippone, A. Marguerite, K. Le Hur, G. Feve, C. Mora,
Entropy 22(8), 847 (2020), in honor of M. Buettiker
Related to Universal resistances of the quantum resistance–capacitance (RC) circuit
C. Mora and K. Le Hur, Nature Physics 6 (9), 697-701 (2010)

3- Topological proximity effects in a Haldane-graphene bilayer system
P. Cheng, P. W. Klein, K. Plekhanov, K. Sengstock, M. Aidelsburger, C. Weitenberg, K. Le Hur, Phys. Rev. B 100, 081107 (2019)

4- Driven dissipative dynamics and topology of quantum impurity systems
Review: K. Le Hur, L. Henriet, L. Herviou, K. Plekhanov, A. Petrescu, T. Goren, M. Schiro, C. Mora C, P. P. Orth
Comptes Rendus Physique. 19(6) 451-83 (2018)
See also: Many-Body Quantum Electrodynamics Networks: Non-Equilibrium Condensed Matter Physics with Light,
Review : K. Le Hur, L. Henriet, A. Petrescu, K. Plekhanov, G. Roux, M. Schiro, C. R. Physique 17 808-835 (2016)

5- Fluctuations as a Probe of many-body entanglement
Review: H. F. Song, S. Rachel, C. Flindt, I. Klich, N. Laflorencie, K. Le Hur, Phys. Rev. B 85, 035409 (2012), Editors’ Suggestion Related to Review A. Petrescu, H. F. Song, S. Rachel, Z. Ristivojevic, C. Flindt, N. Laflorencie, I. Klich, N. Regnault, K. Le Hur, J. Stat. Mech. (2014) P10005

6- Topological insulators and Mott physics from the Hubbard interaction
S. Rachel and K. Le Hur, Phys. Rev. B 82, 075106 (2010)
Related to W. Wu, S. Rachel, W.-M. Liu, and K. Le Hur Phys. Rev. B 85, 205102 (2012)
K. Plekhanov, I. Vasic, A. Petrescu, R. Nirwan, G. Roux, W. Hofstetter, K. Le Hur, Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 157201 (2018)
Ph. Klein, A. G. Grushin, K. Le Hur, Phys. Rev. B 103, 035114 (2021); J. Hutchinson, Ph. Klein, K. Le Hur, Phys. Rev. B 104, 075120 (2021); J. Legendre and K. Le Hur, Phys. Rev. Research 2, 022043 (2020)

7- Time-reversal-symmetry breaking in circuit-QED-based photon lattices and Kagome lattice
J. Koch, A. Houck, K. Le Hur, S.-M. Girvin, Phys. Rev. A 82, 043811 (2010)
Related to J. Koch and K. Le Hur, Phys. Rev. A 80, 023811(2009)
A. Petrescu, A. Houck, K. Le Hur, Phys. Rev. A 86, 053804 (2012)

8- Superconductivity close to the Mott state: From condensed-matter systems to superfluidity in optical lattices
Review: K. Le Hur and T. M. Rice, Review, Annals of Physics 324 Issue 7 1452-1515 (2009)

9- Charge Fractionalization in Quantum Wires
H. Steinberg, G. Barak, A. Yacoby, L. N. Pfeiffer, K. W. West, B. I. Halperin, K. Le Hur, Nature Physics 4, 116-119 (2008)
Theory: K. Le Hur, B. I. Halperin, A. Yacoby Annals of Physics 323, 3037-3058 (2008)

10- Entanglement entropy, decoherence, and quantum phase transitions of a dissipative two-level system
Review: K. Le Hur, Annals of Physics 323, 2208-2240 (2008)