Rutgers University Astrophysics Colloquium
Many-fermion quantum entanglement in the high temperature superconductors and in black holes
Abstract: Recent decades have seen remarkable progress in the theory of many-boson quantum entanglement, which has applications to quantum spin liquids in materials and devices. But most modern quantum materials require the theory of many-fermion quantum entanglement, which has been less widely studied. I will describe two varieties of many-fermion entanglement, and their physical applications: (A) the Fractionalized Fermi liquid (FL*), which predicted key features of recent measurements of the resistance in an applied magnetic field of the “pseudogap" phase of the cuprate high temperature superconductors. (B) the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model, which has led to a computation of the low energy quantum density of states of charged black holes in asymptotically flat 3+1 dimensional space. Extensions of the SYK model also lead to a theory of the strange metal phase of the cuprates.