The strange quantum physics of the high temperature superconductors

The strange quantum physics of the high temperature superconductors
Subir Sachdev, Harvard University
Subir Sachdev
Date and time: Wed, Mar 11, 2020 - 4:00pm
Refreshments at 3:40pm
Location: Hasbrouck 124
Category: Departmental Colloquium
Abstract:

All high-temperature superconductors exhibit a “strange metal” state above the critical temperature for superconductivity. In the strange metal, electrical and thermal currents are not carried by individual particles, but collectively by an entangled quantum many-body state. In the hole-doped cuprate superconductors, there is now increasing evidence that the strange metal originates from a novel quantum phase transition at zero temperature, not controlled by the breaking of any symmetry.  I will describe how the ideas of quantum particle fractionalization and emergent gauge fields are helping understand such states of quantum matter.