Events

"From Moiré to Maxwell: Quantum Electrodynamics from Flat-Band Electrons"


Twist-tunable moire materials provide new universes for the pursuit of emergent phenomena, with superconductivity, charge fractionalization, and symmetry breaking recently discovered within the phase diagram of a single sample. The prospect of studying quantum phase transitions into fractionalized phases is particularly exciting, as it could provide a table-top "simulation" of 2+1D Quantum Electrodynamics: many such transitions could feature emergent gauge fields coupled to Dirac fermions. I will explore some of the recent experiments that have generated this excitement, the theoretical picture for why QED can emerge in materials, and evidence from numerical simulations that this picture works out in certain concrete models.