This award supports theoretical research and education at the interface of condensed matter physics and atomic, molecular, and optical physics. The research is focused on the study and discovery of emergent properties of systems of strongly interacting particles.
The PI seeks to advance understanding in two areas involving strongly interacting electrons and ultracold atoms obeying Fermi statistics confined in optical lattice traps. The first area, novel aspects of the crossover from Bose-Einstein Condensation of tightly bound pairs to the cooperative pairing of the Bardeen Cooper Schrieffer theory that takes place in atomic Fermi gases will be investigated with particular emphasis on the very strongly interacting unitarity regime. The second area involves a study of superconductivity near the Mott metal-insulator transition with specific applications to high temperature superconductors, other transition metal oxides, and low-dimensional organometalic systems.
The proposed research addresses key issues in the physics of condensed matter and complex materials. The work on the crossover from Bose-Einstein Condensation of tightly bound pairs to the cooperative pairing of the Bardeen Cooper Schrieffer theory will focus on strong correlations in atomic Fermi gases, which has implications for fields as diverse as quark-gluon plasmas and color superconductivity in quantum chromodynamics. There are by now many materials in which superconductivity occurs near a Mott insulator, the best known being the high temperature superconducting cuprates. These materials force us to describe strong correlations using non-perturbative approaches.
NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARY:
This award supports theoretical research and education that seeks to understand known new states of electronic matter that arise in complex materials and discover new states of matter in complex materials like high temperature superconductors and in atoms in spatially periodic traps created with laser light.
These seemingly diverse systems that lie in the domains of condensed matter physics on the one hand and atomic, molecular, and optical physics on the other, share the feature of being systems composed of many components, be they electrons or atoms, that interact strongly with each other. This research effort seeks to develop and apply advanced theoretical techniques to enable the understanding of the unusual properties and new states of matter that emerge from these systems.
This is fundamental research at the frontiers that contributes to the intellectual foundations upon which future technologies may rest. These include quantum information systems, future advanced electronic devices, and currently unforeseen possibilities. The research activity also supports training the next generation of condensed matter theorists.
