A Pan-American Advanced Studies Institute (PASI), jointly supported by the NSF and Department of Energy is proposed on the topic of Mottness and Quantum Criticality, to be held in Tobago, West Indies during June, 2005. The topic involves problems that are central to the unsolved problems of the origin of superconductivity in the copper-oxide materials and organic superconductors, and non-Fermi liquid behavior in U and Ce intermetallics (heavy fermions). This two-week institute will bring together leading researchers in the field to focus on both of these problems. The PASI will consist of approximately 20 lecturers and 30 graduate students, half from the US and half from the rest of the Americas, to be selected by an organizing committee.
Five questions will comprise the focus of the PASI: 1) What is the experimental evidence that quantum critical points influence finite temperature properties of the cuprates?, 2) What role does spectral weight transfer over the Mott scale play in the normal and superconducting states of the cuprates?, 3) What is the role played by disorder close to quantum critical points?, 4) Do model studies of strongly correlated systems have any predictive power? 5) What can be learned from parallel systems such as the organic superconductors, heavy fermions and novel metal phases in low dimensional systems? To further the impact of the PASI, the organizers have 1) included both experimentalists and theorists and 2) limited the scope of the conference to focus on the very specific questions posed above. Ample time in the workshop will be devoted to discussions, in part to enable collaborations that could elucidate the posed questions. As these questions are central to the current debate on strongly correlated electrons, the PASI is timely and is likely to generate further activity in the subject matter.
