The study of many body physics has provided a scientific playground of surprise and continuing revolution over the past half century. The serendipitous discovery of new states and properties of matter,phenomena such as superfluidity,the Meissner,the Kondo and the fractional quantum hall effect,have driven the development of new conceptual frameworks for our understanding about collective behavior,the ramifications of which have spread far beyond the confines of terrestrial condensed matter physics — to cosmology,nuclear and particle physics. Here I shall selectively review some of the developments in this field,from the cold-war period,until the present day. I describe how,with the discovery of new classes of collective order,the unfolding puzzles of high temperature superconductivity and quantum criticality,the prospects for major conceptual discoveries remain as bright today as they were more than half a century ago. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
The study of many body physics has provided a scientific playground of surprise and continuing revolution over the past half century. The serendipitous discovery of new states and properties of matter,phenomena such as superfluidity,the Meissner,the Kondo and the fractional quantum hall effect,have driven the development of new conceptual frameworks for our understanding about collective behavior,the ramifications of which have spread far beyond the confines of terrestrial condensed matter physics — to cosmology,nuclear and particle physics. Here I shall selectively review some of the developments in this field,from the cold-war period,until the present day. I describe how,with the discovery of new classes of collective order,the unfolding puzzles of high temperature superconductivity and quantum criticality,the prospects for major conceptual discoveries remain as bright today as they were more than half a century ago. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Abstract.The study of many-body physics has provided a scientific playground of surprise and continuing revolution over the past half century. The serendipitous discovery of new states and properties of matter, phenomena such as superfluidity, the Meissner, the Kondo and the fractional quantum hall effects, have driven the development of new conceptual frameworks for our understanding about collective behavior, the ramifications of which have spread far beyond the confines of terrestrial condensed matter physics- to cosmology, nuclear and particle physics. Here I shall selectively review some of the developments in this field, from the cold-war period, until the present day. I describe how, with the discovery of new classes of collective order, the unfolding puzzles of high temperature superconductivity and quantum criticality, the prospects for major conceptual discoveries remain as bright today as they were more than half a century ago. 1 Emergent Matter: a new Frontier Since the time of the Greeks, scholars have pondered over the principles that govern the universe on its tiniest and most vast scales. The icons that exemplify
The study of many-body physics has provided a scientific playground of surprise and continuing revolution over the past half century. The serendipitous discovery of new states and properties of matter, phenomena such as superfluidity, the Meissner, the Kondo and the fractional quantum hall effects, have driven the development of new conceptual frameworks for our understanding about collective behaviour, the ramifications of which have spread far beyond the confines of terrestrial condensed matter physics- to cosmology, nuclear and particle physics. Here, we are selectively reviewing some of the developments in this field, from the cold-war period, until the present day. With the discovery of new classes of collective order, the unfolding puzzles of high temperature superconductivity and quantum criticality, the prospects for major conceptual discoveries remain as bright today as they were more than half a century ago.
The study of many-body physics has provided a scientic playground of surprise and continuing revolution over the past half century. The serendipitous discovery of new states and properties of matter, phenomena such as superfluidity, the Meissner, the Kondo and the fractional quantum hall eects, have driven the development of new conceptual frameworks for our understanding about collective behavior, the ramications of which have spread far beyond the connes of terres- trial condensed matter physics- to cosmology, nuclear and particle physics. Here I shall selectively review some of the developments in this eld, from the cold-war period, until the present day. I describe how, with the discovery of new classes of collective order, the unfolding puzzles of high temperature superconductivity and quantum criticality, the prospects for major conceptual discoveries remain as bright today as they were more than half a century ago. 1 Emergent Matter: a new Frontier Since the time of the Greeks, scholars have pondered over the principles that govern the universe on its tiniest and most vast scales. The icons that exemplify these frontiers are very well known - the swirling galaxy denoting the cosmos and the massive accelerators used to probe matter at successively smaller scales- from the atom down to the quark and beyond. These traditional frontiers of physics are largely concerned with reductionism: the notion that once we know the laws of nature that operate on the smallest possible scales, the mysteries of the universe will nally be revealed to us(1). Over the last century and a half, a period that stretches back to Darwin and Boltzmann- scientists have also become fascinated by another notion: the idea that to understand nature, one also needs to understand and study the princi- ples that govern collective behavior of vast assemblies of matter. For a wide range of purposes, we already know the microscopic laws that govern matter on the tiniest scales. For example, a gold atom can be completely understood with the Schrodinger equation and the laws of quantum mechanics established more than seventy years ago. Yet, a gold atom is spherical and featureless- quite unlike the lustrous malleable and conducting metal which human society so prizes. To under- stand how crystalline assemblies of gold atoms acquire the properties of metallic gold, we need new principles{ principles that describe the collective behavior of matter when humungous numbers of gold atoms congregate to form a metallic crystal. It is the search for these new principles that denes the frontiers of many- body physics in the realms of condensed matter physics and its closely related
On October 19, 2014, as I finished this book, a group of physicists convened at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, home of BCS theory [1], to mark 60 years of progress in strongly correlated electron systems (SCES) and to celebrate the 90th birthday of David Pines. This occasion provided a great opportunity for us to reflect on the dizzying progress of the past 60 years of discovery in many-body physics: a period that spans from the Bohm–Pines plasmon theory of metals [2–4], the discovery of Landau Fermi-liquid theory [5], and BCS theory [1], to the modern era of topological order, strange quantum-critical metals, and high-temperature-superconductivity. This book has only scratched the surface of this period, leaving out some key aspects of the field that I perhaps will go into in a future edition. Yet still, almost everything in this book was unknown 60 years ago. The pioneers of early many-body physics in the 1950s simply could not have imagined the revolution of discovery that has since taken place. David Pines recalls thinking, as a graduate student in the early 1950s, that the physicists 20 years earlier had had all the luck. Yet Pines' thesis work with Bohm marked a beginning of 60 years of tremendous discovery. You, the reader, might be tempted to think as David Pines did. However, at the “60 years of SCES” meeting in Urbana, many expressed remarkable optimism that the revolution is decidedly unfinished, and that the next 60 years has much in store. Like earthquakes, big scientific discoveries are unpredictable and come at varying intervals. Today, in the early twenty-first century, a large number of unsolved mysteries and problems in condensed matter physics provide the tremors that suggest that there is much yet to discover. I thought it would be interesting, if only as a historical record, to list a few of the challenges we all face: 1 Wanted: a broader understanding of the classes of emergent order in condensed Matter . Between the many decades of complexity that separate simple elements from primitive life surely lie many layers of emergent material behavior. The possibility of new forms of order, as challenging and surprising as superconductivity, cannot be ruled out.
High-temperature superconductivity, a fundamental topic in condensed matter physics, presents one of the critical scientific challenges of this century. The potential for breakthroughs in this field not only promises to reveal numerous novel quantum phenomena and deepen our understanding of quantum many-body physics but also to significantly drive advancements in experimental techniques, theories, and methodologies in probing correlated quantum systems. More importantly, as a non-perturbative quantum system, high-temperature superconductivity offers an ideal platform and a crucial driving force for systematically establishing non-perturbative quantum field theory. Currently, research on high-temperature superconductivity stands at a critical turning point. Achieving significant breakthroughs requires the development of cutting-edge detection technologies built upon novel concepts, the establishment of innovative theoretical frameworks and methodologies, and insightful elucidation of the physical pictures revealed by experimental findings. Such extensive exploration is vital for unveiling fundamental relationships and identifying the governing principles. By integrating these efforts, we can gain profound insights into the mechanisms of high-temperature superconductivity and significantly expand the horizons of quantum many-body theory.