Ronald Rendell

Ronald Rendell received a Ph.D. in theoretical physics (1980) from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has worked on theory in research projects in the areas of relaxations and transport in complex material systems, the physics of plasmonics in nanostructures and metamaterials, and quantum decoherence, entanglement and quantum correlations in the area of quantum information. In his Ph.D. work, he originated the concept of the localized surface plasmon and identified the first experimental observation of these excitations. He later developed theory and modeling of plasmo-photonic nanostructured arrays and protein-based plasmonic nanostructures. Dr. Rendell developed theory and modeling on relaxation in complex material systems (such as polymers, glasses, electronic materials, dielectrics, ionic conductors) which exhibit time-dependent phenomena related to many-body correlations in the materials. He first identified diffusion in the phase space of relaxing chaotic Hamiltonians as the origin of such time-dependences. As well, he developed theory in the areas of quantum information including decoherence, entanglement and quantum correlations for projects involving quantum dots, cold atoms and slow light. His major area of research has been focused toward resolving the quantum measurement problem. During 2006-2007, Dr. Rendell was a member of Professor Yakir Aharonov’s Center for Quantum Studies where he conducted fundamental quantum mechanics research. In 2006 Dr. Rendell was a founding member of Inspire Institute, and is currently on the board of directors.