{"id":5717,"date":"2013-04-02T15:43:25","date_gmt":"2013-04-02T19:43:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=5717"},"modified":"2013-04-03T07:46:36","modified_gmt":"2013-04-03T11:46:36","slug":"strange-connections-to-strange-metals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=5717","title":{"rendered":"Strange connections to strange metals"},"content":{"rendered":"

In recent years much of the attention of string theorists has turned to applications of string theory (via AdS\/CFT) to heavy-ion physics and condensed matter physics. Since I’m no expert on either topic, I’ve been curious to hear what experts think about this. In the case of heavy-ion physics, as far as I can tell, this doesn’t seem to have worked out very well, with string theory not of much use to say anything about heavy-ion physics at the LHC (although I’d be interested to hear from those more knowledgeable about this). There does still seem to be some promotional activity in this area, with Joe Polchinski last month giving a popular talk<\/a> in which he claimed that<\/p>\n

The quark-gluon liquid, produced at the RHIC accelerator in NY and by the LHC, is best modeled as a black hole, by applying AdS\/CFT duality.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On the AdS\/CMT front, one expert is now being heard from. In the latest Physics Today, Philip Anderson has a piece called Strange connections to strange metals<\/a>, in which he responds to an earlier Physics Today article by Hong Liu, From black holes to strange metals<\/a>, which claimed:<\/p>\n

String theory relates gravity to the physics of a novel phase of matter observed above the superconducting transition temperature. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Anderson writes:<\/p>\n

It [the earlier Physics Today article] is one of many quasi-journalistic discussions I have seen of results using the AdS\/CFT (anti\u2013de Sitter\/conformal field theory) correspondence from quantum gravitation theory ostensibly to solve condensed-matter physics problems such as the \u201cstrange metal\u201d in the cuprate (high Tc) superconducting metals. As the probable source of the buzzword phrase \u201cstrange metal\u201d to describe the phenomena observed in the cuprates and of a theory that bids well to explain those phenomena in detail, I think I have a reasonable motivation to object to the publication of those claims, even though advanced tentatively, when so much is known about this particular phase.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He ends with a summary of what he sees as the problem with the whole AdS\/CMT idea:<\/p>\n

As a very general problem with the AdS\/CFT approach in condensed-matter theory, we can point to those telltale initials \u201cCFT\u201d\u2014conformal field theory. Condensed-matter problems are, in general, neither relativistic nor conformal. Near a quantum critical point, both time and space may be scaling, but even there we still have a preferred coordinate system and, usually, a lattice. There is some evidence of other linear-T phases to the left of the strange metal about which they are welcome to speculate, but again in this case the condensed-matter problem is overdetermined by experimental facts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hong Liu responds here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Anderson will be here at Columbia to give a colloquium April 15 on The Discovery of the Anderson-Higgs Mechanism<\/a>. I’ve written something about this history here<\/a>, look forward to hearing about it from Anderson himself. There’s much speculation about a possible Nobel for the Anderson-Higgs mechanism this year, one wonders if the Nobel committtee has any AdS\/CMT proponents…<\/p>\n

Update<\/strong>: An additional comment about this just occurred to me: the criticism of Anderson’s work on the Anderson-Higgs mechanism has always been that he didn’t appreciate how different relativistic systems. Now he’s claiming the AdS\/CMT proponents don’t appreciate how different non-relativistic systems are.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In recent years much of the attention of string theorists has turned to applications of string theory (via AdS\/CFT) to heavy-ion physics and condensed matter physics. Since I’m no expert on either topic, I’ve been curious to hear what experts … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5717"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5727,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5717\/revisions\/5727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}