Understanding and controlling electronic correlation and instability: toward functional quantum matter

20世纪初量子力学的发展使我们有能力理解和控制半导体和铁磁体等材料的性质，这导致了产生计算机、高速通信设备和遥控器等的技术革命。简单地说，如果没有几十年的凝聚态研究，导致我们对半导体的理解，你随身携带的手机将是一所房子的大小。 我们对半导体等简单材料的理解来自于对原子尺度上发生的事情的理解。然而，从20世纪后半叶开始，出现了一类新的材料，它们的性质要微妙得多，因为它们是由分布在比原子大得多的距离上的大量电子相互作用的结果。这些所谓的“强关联”系统的理论是一个深刻的智力问题，可能掌握着下一代技术的关键。 我们研究的目标是通过结合化学和在高压和强磁场下的测量来发现和理解这些新的“新兴”材料。我们认为，高压路线特别提供了一种发现新的和潜在有用的材料状态的好方法。我们寻找的性质是高温超导和所谓的“拓扑”状态，它们可能为电子提供低散热，甚至是用于量子计算的元素。 在短期内，我们的结果对其他正在研究类似材料的物理学家来说将是重要的，但从长远来看，对强关联材料的研究可能会带来突破性技术。事实上，这种情况已经在发生，例如，高温超导体正在导致磁体技术的重要进步，这将极大地改进生物医学研究中使用的磁共振探头。 我们的成果将发表在科学期刊上，然而我们研究的好处只有一部分是所获得的知识：更重要的是我们培训的高级材料科学研究人员，他们可以帮助加拿大建立一个蓬勃发展的材料科学产业。

The development of quantum mechanics in the early 20th century gave us the power to understand and control the properties of materials, such as semiconductors and ferromagnets, that led to the technological revolution that produced computers, high-speed communications devices, remote sensors, and so on. To put it simply, without the several decades of condensed matter research that led to our understanding of semiconductors, the cell phone that you carry around in your pocket would be the size of a house. Our understanding of simple materials such as semiconductors comes from understanding what happens at the atomic scale. Starting in the latter part of the 20th century, however, a new class of materials emerged whose properties are much more subtle, because they result from interactions of vast numbers of electrons spread over distances much larger than an atom. The theory of these so-called "strongly correlated" systems is a deep intellectual problem that may hold the key to the next generation of technology. The goal of our research is to discover and understand these new “emergent” materials, through a combination of chemistry, and measurements at high pressures and high magnetic fields. We believe that the high pressure route in particular offers a good way to discover novel and potentially useful states of materials. The properties that we seek are things like high temperature superconductivity and so-called “topological” states, that may provide electronics with low heat dissipation, or even elements for quantum computation. In the short-term our results will be important to other physicists who are investigating similar materials, but in the longer term it is likely that research on strongly correlated materials will lead to breakthrough technologies. Indeed this is already happening, for example, with high temperature superconductors that are leading to important advances in magnet technology, which will greatly improve magnetic resonance probes used in biomedical research. Our results will be published in scientific journals, however the benefits of our research are only partly in the knowledge gained: even more important are the people who we train in advanced materials science research, who can help to establish a thriving materials science industry in Canada.