Quantum Phase Transitions
Coordinators: Andrey V. Chubukov, Piers Coleman, Dirk K Morr, Michael R. Norman, Hilbert von Löhneysen
QPT Blog: week 1 | week 2 | week 3 | week 4 | week 5 | week 6 | week 7 | week 8 | week 9 | week 10 | week 11 | week 12 | week 13 | week 14 | week 15 | week 16
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Quantum phase transitions take place when quantum matter becomes unstable to a new, ordered ground-state. A growing body of experimental work on quantum phase transitions, in a wide variety of matter, including highly correlated metals, high temperature superconductors, quantum magnets and Bose Einstein fluids, indicates that fundamentally new physics can develop in the vicinity of quantum phase transitions. Second order quantum phase transitions lead to the phenomenon of "quantum criticality". Although a quantum critical point lies at absolute zero, it forms a kind of naked singularity in the material phase diagram, and a wide region of the fintie temperature phase diagram develops novel properties. Quantum critical metals develop transport and thermodynamic properties that deviate fundamentally from the properties of conventional metals.
This workshop will address the problem of quantum phase transitions, and the breakdown of Fermi liquid theory near such transitions. The workshop will provide an ideal setting to bring together a variety of theorists and experimentalists working in the field of quantum criticality, with the underlying goal of understanding the nature of quantum phase transitions and why standard approaches in many cases fail to explain the observed physics.
To help establish a sense of continuity in the meeting, and to provide some kind of instutitional memory whereby participants can look back at discussions of previous weeks,we are implementing a weekly "Blog".
The blogger will provide a brief diary of