SCES @ 60: A Summit Symposium (6769)

October 17, 2014 – October 18, 2014

Location

Urbana, Illinois, USA

Organizers
Laura Greene, University of Illinois, Urbana-Campaign
David Campbell, Boston University

Overview
This Summit Symposium will examine the foundations, present status, and future prospects of the field of strongly correlated electron systems at approximately 60 years old. In light of the recent remarkable progress of this field in materials growth, measurement, theory, computation, and our general understanding, this is an opportune time to bring some of the world’s experts together to examine the history, elucidate where we are now, and make bold and specific recommendations for the future to aid our progress in solving this complex and important question.

Strongly correlated electron systems (SCES) are materials that exhibit electronic properties that cannot be derived from the underlying crystallographic lattice. In conventional solids, computational methods such as density functional theory (DFT) can be quite successful at predicting electronic structure. For SCES, DFT can predict solid formation and simple phase transitions, but fails at predicting or describing their electronic structure. All SCES exhibit a ubiquitous temperature vs.doping (or pressure) phase diagram that displays a “dome” under which the material is superconducting,antiferromagnetic, or some other describable ordered phase. In a region outside the dome, typically on the over-‐doped (or high-‐pressure) side, the materials behave as Landau-‐Fermi liquids, which we can accurately describe using Landau’s quasiparticle concept and the renormalization group. At temperatures above those that define the dome, typically in the optimally or under-‐doped region, which is actually the rest of the phase diagram, contains “electron matter” in which the excitations are not Landau quasiparticles, and to date, are not readily described by known theoretical mean-‐field or computational techniques. This electron matter is seen in over 40 classes of materials (including the cuprate and Fe-‐based high temperature superconductors, organic superconductors, heavy fermions, transition-‐metal di-‐chalcogenides, and general quantum critical materials) as pseudogap, electronic stripe, electronic nematic, heavy electron, temperature dependent or novel charge density wave behavior, or any clearly non-‐Fermi liquid behavior. Similar phase diagrams are also seen in thermoelectrics and manganites. The understanding the origin of these emergent collective behaviors represents perhaps the greatest unsolved problem in physics today. It is also widely accepted that finding the solutions to these problems is essential if definitive progress is to be made in the predictive design of functionalSCES, such as high-‐temperature supercondutors.

SCES@60 will consist of a series of speakers covering the roots of discovery, landmark achievements, and the present status in experiment, theory and computation. We will conclude with a panel to define specific future research directions. Talks will be published on our web site (author discretion) along with notes taken during the panel.

This event culminates in a Birthday celebration for a founder for the exciting field of strongly correlated electron systems, David Pines. DP@90 will be a banquet with a series of short talks focusing on the achievements of David Pines; with personal recollections encouraged.