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

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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.