nLab quantum material

Idea

In solid state physics, by a quantum material one means – broadly and somewhat vaguely – a phase of matter whose properties are deeply controlled by quantum physics and often by topology in their ground state wave functions, for instance in that their quantum ground state is globally non-trivial even at vanishing temperature (“topological phase of matter”) or that they (in addition ) exhibit long-range entanglement due to strong interaction and hence strong correlation of the materials’ constituents (“topological order”).

In particular, (topological) quantum materials play a key role as hardware for existing or expected realizations of (topological) quantum computers.

Since strongly interacting (non-perturbative) quantum systems are beyond the range of validity of traditional methods of perturbative QFT and mean-field theory, the theoretical description of quantum materials is still often phenomenological, based on clever quasi-particle models (such as Cooper pairs for superconductors or composite-fermions for fractional quantum Hall materials). One approach to eventually describe strongly-correlated quantum materials more systematically is holographic duality in solid state physics.

Examples

Classes of examples:

• superconductors

• quantum Hall materials

• quantum spin liquids

• also quasicrystals.

Concrete examples:

• graphene

• goldene

Related concepts

• topological quantum computation

• topological phase of matter, K-theory classification

• topological order

• topological entanglement entropy

• quantum phase transition

• Majorana zero mode

• holographic duality in solid state physics

References

Surveys:

• B. Keimer, J. E. Moore, The physics of quantum materials, Nature Physics 13 (2017) 1045–1055 [doi:10.1038/nphys4302]

• US Department of Energy – Office of Science, Basic Reseacrh Needs for Quantum Materials (2017) [pdf, pdf]

• Feliciano Giustino et al., The 2021 quantum materials roadmap, J. Phys. Mater. 3 042006 (2020) (doi:10.1088/2515-7639/abb74e)

• Nicholas R. Glavin, Pulickel M. Ajayan, Swastik Kar, The Age of Quantum Materials, Advanced Materials 35 special issue 27 (2023) [doi:10.1002/adma.202204928]

with emphasis on strong-correlation (cf. non-perturbative QFT):

• Andreas Schadschneider, Götz S. Uhrig: Strongly Correlated Systems in Solid State Physics, lecture notes (2004) [pdf, pdf]

• Peter Fulde, Correlated Electrons in Quantum Matter, World Scientific (2012) [doi:10.1142/8419, pdf]

• Alvaro Ferraz, Kumar S. Gupta, Gordon W. Semenoff, Pasquale Sodano (eds): Strongly Coupled Field Theories for Condensed Matter and Quantum Information Theory, Springer Proceedings in Physics 239, Springer (2020) [doi:10.1007/978-3-030-35473-2, pdf]

with an eye towards topological quantum computation:

• Tudor D. Stanescu, Introduction to Topological Quantum Matter & Quantum Computation, CRC Press 2020 (ISBN:9780367574116)

See also:

• Wikipedia, Quantum materials

• Wikipedia, Quantum materials