Flat Bands: Design, Topology, and Correlations

Date

Mar 6, 2013 - Mar 9, 2013

Time

9:00 AM - 6:00 PM

Speaker

Marcel Franz, Roderich Moessner, Sid Parameswaran

Affiliation

University of British Columbia, Canada; MPIPKS Dresden, Germany; UC Berkeley, USA

Series

MPI-PKS Workshops, Seminare und Konferenzen

Language

en

Main Topic

Physik

Other Topics

Physik, Materialien

Host

Claudia Pönisch

Description

Emergence of strongly correlated phases of matter is particularly probable in systems that exhibit an extensive degeneracy in the absence of inter-particle interactions. The resulting quenching of kinetic energy, colloquially termed ’flat bands’, enhances the efficacy of interactions and leads to interesting phases with both conventional broken symmetries, such as ferromagnets, as well as topologically ordered phases such as lattice versions of fractional quantum Hall states and fractional topological insulators. A flurry of recent numerical observations of fractionalized phases in lattice models with ’topological’ flat bands, has renewed interest in the study of flat bands of electronic insulators. There have also been various proposals to realize and study flat bands in experimental systems, ranging from oxide heterostructures to optical lattices of ultracold fermions with an artificial gauge field. In a different vein, the realization of various frustrated hopping models of ultracold bosons in optical lattices has motivated interest in the rather less well-studied problem of bosons in flat bands. In all these cases, the fundamental role played by correlations simultaneously leads to novel behavior while complicating the understanding of these phases from numerical and analytical approaches. This focused workshop aims to bring together researchers working on diverse aspects of flat band physics, covering questions such as: Is there a reliable route to designing flat bands in experimentally relevant systems, be they electronic or cold atomic systems? What correlated phases and new physical phenomena can occur (generically or as a result of careful fine-tuning)? Is there a systematic understanding and/or classification of (topological) phases in flat bands, and how does one characterise them?

Links

• Registration and Program

Last modified: Dec 4, 2012, 8:14:19 PM