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7:30 pm, Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Fairmont Social Lounge, St. John's College
Quantum Materials
George Sawatzky
University of Brish Columbia
Without quantum mechanics we would not have the transistor, light emitting
diodes, information storage, fluorescent tracers, MRI’s, etc., just to
mention a few everyday devices. All these applications use the properties
of electrons at room temperature. So what is new in the world of quantum
materials? Much of the modern excitement in quantum materials research has
to do with the peculiar behaviour caused by interactions between the huge
numbers of electrons in solids, often in small nanostructures. In this
‘many-body’ world science fiction becomes reality: electrons can
effectively split up with spin and charge living separate lives or even
fractional electric charge. These effects lead to the possibility of
materials and devices with spectacular new properties- we hardly know
where this will lead us, but it is certainly fascinating and challenging.
This will all be explained in terms of simple pictures and “gedanken”
experiments, with little use of equations.
Find out more
by visiting his website.
Additional resources for this talk: video.
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