3:30 pm Zoom
"The Dark Energy of Quantum Materials"
The nearly 80-year-old correlated electron problems remain largely unsolved; with one stunning success being BCS electron-phonon mediated conventional superconductivity. There are dozens of families of superconductors that are unconventional, including the high-Tc cuprate and iron-based, and heavy fermion superconductors. Although these materials are disparate in many of their properties, some of their fundamental characteristics are strikingly similar, including their ubiquitous phase diagram, with intriguing correlated-electron (not-Fermi liquid) phases at temperatures well above the superconducting transition. These remain among the greatest unsolved problems in physics today; and I will present an analogy stressing that. I will also give a short overview of the US National MagLab and mention some of our own recent work on identifying a possible new pairing mechanism in a heavy-fermion superconductor.