Quantum Criticality and Topology in Correlated Electron Systems

Workshop Report

The main focus of our workshop was on new development in strongly correlated electron systems and on interplay between electron correlations and topology. Invited talks were given by world leaders in the field of condensed matter physics, including Andrei Bernevig (Princeton University), Claudia Felser (MPI for Chemical Physics of Solids), Liang Fu (MIT), Aharon Kapitulnik (Stanford University), Andrew Mackenzie (MPI for Chemical Physics of Solids), Yuji Matsuda (Kyoto University), Roderic Messner (MPI-PKS, Dresden), Subir Sachdev (Harvard University), and others.

At the same time, younger participants had ample possibilities to present their work. Several invited and contributed talks during the workshop week were given by postdocs and graduate students, including Eli Fox (a PhD student at Stanford), Jian Kang (a post-doc at Florida State University), Avraham Klein (a post-doc at the University of Minnesota), and Julia Link (a post-doc at Simon Fraser University). There were also two sessions with blackboard talks during the seminar week, where more students and post-docs gave their presentations. Finally, all junior participants presented posters during the workshop week.

Several new and important results were presented at the workshop, including an observation of ferromagnetism in twisted bilayer graphene, quantization of thermal Hall conductivity in a spin-liquid candidate material, theoretical explanation of the linear T resistivity in SrRu2O4, new results for time-reversal symmetry under strain in Sr2RuO4  and theoretical scenarios for the observed behavior,  an exactly solvable SYK model of a bad metal, a proposal for the mechanism behind a recently discovered giant Hall thermal conductivity in high-Tc cuprates, and others. Each of these results was thoroughly discussed  by participants. We are sure that discussions and collaborations started during this workshop will lead to new important results in the immediate future.