Rationale and Scope:
Recent years have seen increasing recognition of the exciting potential of correlated flat band materials for merging strong correlations beyond the single particle picture and the topology of electronic wavefunctions. This has led to the prediction and/or discovery of a wide range of novel phenomena, such as unconventional superconductivity, nematicity, strange metallicity, generalized Wigner crystal state, fractional Chern insulator states, time reversal symmetry breaking charge orders, exotic magnetism and more. The potential is rooted in the expectation that systems exhibiting a large density of states near the Fermi level can respond to instabilities under different types of interaction, because the Coulomb energy is readily on the same order as the electronic kinetic energy. The emerging success of utilizing moiré superlattices and geometrically frustrated kagome lattices to produce flat bands with quenched kinetic energy has brought new surprises, puzzles, and challenges.
The workshop, jointly organized by the Rice Center for Quantum Materials (RCQM) and Extreme Quantum Materials Alliance (eQMA), will bring together a diverse pool of theoretical and experimental experts on various aspects of topology and strong correlations in flat band systems and related quantum materials. It will address the exciting progress made so far and the future directions of the field. Topics to be discussed during the workshop include:
- New design principles for tunable topological flat bands in quantum materials
- Latest progress on identifying new quantum phases in topological flat bands
- Theoretical modeling of topology in the regime of strong electron correlations
- New experimental methodologies for probing strongly correlated topology
The total number of invited speakers will be about 25.
Registration fee is $50 for Rice University attendees, and $200 for non-Rice attendees. The registration fee is waived for the invited speakers and RCQM faculty.
The workshop expects to have a (limited) number of ICAM fellowships to support non-Rice junior participants.
Dates: November 6-November 8, 2023
Location: Rice University
Registration link: https://FlatBandsWorkshop.eventbrite.com
Invited Speakers:
Invited talks: 20 + 10 mins
Recent developments on moiré superlattices
- Yulin Chen (Oxford U.)
- Liang Fu (MIT)
- Elaine Li (UT Austin)
- Jedediah Pixley (Rutgers U.)
- Feng Wang (UC Berkely)
- Xiaodong Xu (U. Washington)
- Liuyan Zhao (U Michigan)
Emergent orders and excitations in kagome materials
- Girsh Blumberg (Rutgers U.)
- Jiun-Haw Chu (U. Washington)
- Mason Klemm (Rice U.)
- Liang Wu (U. Penn)
- Binghai Yan (Weizmann)
Flat band and correlated superconductors
- Lei Chen (Rice U.)
- Andrea Damascelli (UBC)
- Zurab Guguchia (PSI)
- Jianwei Huang (Rice U.)
- Yi Li (Johns Hopkins)
- Päivi Törmä (Aalto U.)
Topology and correlation in strongly interacting systems
- Haim Beidenkopf (Weizmann)
- Julia Chan (Baylor U.)
- Rob McQueeny (Ames Lab)
- Emilia Morosan (Rice U.)
- Katja Nowack (Cornell U.)
- Silke Paschen (TU Vienna)
- Maia Vergniory (MPI Dresden)
New strategies for constructing and probing topological flat bands
- Joe Checkelsky (MIT)
- Chunhui Du (UCSD/Georgia Tech)
- Biao Lian (Princeton U.)
- Raquel Queiroz (Columbia)
- Elton Santos (U. Edinburgh)
- Kai Sun (U Michigan)
Format:
The workshop will last for nearly three days, incorporating invited speaker slots as well as two poster sessions to engage junior participants. We expect to select several contributed talks, each lasting 12+3 mins, from abstracts submitted for poster presentations.
The scientific program will start in the morning on Monday, November 6, and conclude by mid- or late-Afternoon on Wednesday, November 8.
Organizers:
Pengcheng Dai (Rice University)
Qimiao Si (Rice University)
Yonglong Xie (Rice University)
Ming Yi (Rice University)
For questions on the scientific program, please contact one of the organizers.
For accommodation and other logistics questions, please contact Theresa Cisneros (tac6@rice.edu), Valerie Gudell (vmg1@rice.edu), or Shilly Riser (sr54@rice.edu).
