Quantum matter: emergence under the spell of the fermion signs.

Macroscopic matter as understood conventionally is 'classical' in the sense that it corresponds with product states in terms of its quantum mechanical constituents, lacking any macroscopic quantum physical entanglement. Recently, awareness has also been growing of the existence of 'quantum matter', stuff that exhibits quantum weirdness in its macroscopic properties. The goal of this project is to obtain a mathematical description of metallic forms of quantum matter formed from strongly interacting fermions. These are believed to be realized in nature in the form of the 'strange metals' discovered experimentally in, for instance, high Tc superconductors. This research exploits the very recent discovery that mathematical techniques of string theory (the AdS/CFT correspondence) seem to offer a description of such states, which will be studied by our multidisciplinary team of theoretical physicists using techniques and notions of both quantum information and condensed matter theory. As a direct result of this project, we hope to help pin down a whole new class of material behavior that is of potential consequence to all of fundamental physics.