Fractionalization and emergent gauge symmetries in quantum condensed matter

Since this is a hastily arranged “in-house” colloquium, I plan to make it partially pedagogic concerning a body of thought that has developed in condensed matter theory over the past half century, but which has only much more recently come to be satisfactorily understood.  I will plan to spend roughly half of the time explaining what the title means, and the second half with describing some recent developments (some of which are original to my group) in terms of expanding these ideas and searching (still with uncertain success) for realizations in the world of quantum materials.

Speaker: Steve Kivelson, Stanford University