Niels Bohr Lecture by Jörg Schmalian, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

Title: Superconductivity without Quasiparticles

Abstract: Superconductivity is abundant near quantum-critical points, where fluctuations suppress the formation of Fermi liquid quasiparticles and the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer theory no longer applies.

Holographic superconductivity, rooted in the duality of quantum field theory and gravity theory, has been proposed to describe such systems.

We derive holographic superconductivity in form of a gravity theory with emergent space-time from a quantum many-body Hamiltonian.

About the speaker

Jörg Schmalian received his doctoral degree in 1993 at the Freie University in Berlin.

• He has contributed more than 200 scholarly articles to the peer reviewed literature and given more than 250 invited talks at international conferences. 
• At the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) he is the head of the Institute for Theory of Condensed Matter (TKM).
• His  research group at TKM works on strongly correlated electron systems and complex quantum matter.
• He also heads  the division  Theory of Quantum Materials at the Institute for Quantum Materials and Technologies (IQMT) at KIT.
• Prior to moving to Karlsruhe in 2011, Dr. Schmalian was a full professor at Iowa State University and Senior Scientists at the Department of Energy Ames Laboratory. 

• He is a member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences.

• Since 2022 he is Editor in Chief of Advances in Physics. 

Schmalian serves on a number of international advisory boards, has co-organized numerous international conferences, workshops and summer schools, and has been honored by several awards, including a fellowship from the American Physical Society, the 2022 John Bardeen Prize for superconductivity theory, and teaching awards at Iowa State Univ. and KIT. 

Coffee, tea and cake served at 15:45