The conceptual challenges facing condensed matter physics as it seeks to describe phases of quantum matter that lie outside the Ginzburg-Landau-Wilson framework of spontaneous symmetry breaking. Students learn the organizing principles now thought to shape emergent quantum matter — strong electronic correlations, geometric frustration, zero-temperature quantum criticality, the topology and quantum geometry of wavefunctions, and many-body entanglement — and how open problems such as non-Fermi-liquid metals, topological order, and unconventional superconductivity are framed on a generic temperature versus quantum-fluctuation phase diagram.
A perspective article on the outstanding challenges in understanding emergent quantum matter as condensed matter physics enters a second quantum revolution. It argues that progress requires going bey…