Reviews of Modern Physics

Abstract

How do the interactions between the vastly many electrons in solids produce the emergent phenomena we recognize as the macroscopic behavior of the materials we encounter in everyday life, and in the exotic materials and devices we engineer in the laboratory? The central source of intellectual vitality and practical importance of condensed matter physics is the richness and diversity of behaviors exhibited by strongly interacting systems with many degrees of freedom, ranging from the collective behavior of neurons in the brain to the collective condensation of Cooper pairs that produce the macroscopic quantum phenomena associated with superconducting order. The main thrust of the research carried out by Professor Kivelson is the search for theoretical characterization of qualitatively new behaviors of interacting electrons (i.e., new states of matter)as well as new regimes of parameters in which familiar states of matter behave in new and different ways. In particular, he seeks to explore; qualitatively...the relation between the microscopic interactions between electrons and the effective parameters that control the macroscopic behavior of solids. Current