Hudspeth Lecture

Prof. Gabriel Kotliar, Rutgers

"Towards Material Design Using Strongly Correlated Electron Materials"

4:15pm, RLM 4.102

Host: Prof. Fiete

Abstract:

The standard model of solids, firmly grounded on many body theory and powerful computational techniques built around the density functional theory, provides an accurate description of many materials of great technological significance.

Correlated electron systems are materials which display remarkable phenomena which fall outside the standard model of solid state physics, as for example metal to insulator transitions and high temperature superconductivity.

Discovered by accident, correlated materials continue to surprise us with their exceptional physical properties and perspective for new potential applications. The most recent example provided by the iron arsenide based high temperature superconductors.

From a theoretical perspective correlated electron systems pose one of the most difficult non-perturbative challenges in physics. In this colloquium I will give an elementary introduction to the field of strongly correlated electron systems and Dynamical Mean Field Theory (DMFT) a non perturbative method which provides a zeroth order picture of the strong correlation phenomena in close analogy with the Weiss mean field theory in statistical mechanics. Applications materials containing f and d electrons will be presented to show how the anomalous properties of correlated materials emerge from their atomic constituents.

I will conclude with an outlook of the challenges ahead and the perspectives for rational material design using strongly correlated materials.