MATERIALS SCIENCE COLLOQUIUM

Refreshments will be served at 10:45 a.m.

ABSTRACT: The recent discovery of the topological insulator revealed that relativistic spin-orbit coupling can provide a novel route to realization of a new quantum phase of matter. The physics behind this surprising finding is understood at the level of one-electron picture without electron-electron interactions, or correlation effects, which have been the main driver for researches on transition-metal oxides in the past few decades. In this talk, I will show that the spin-orbit coupling can induce correlated electron phenomena in otherwise weakly-correlated 5d transition-metal oxide iridates, which brings an intriguing possibility of combining the two effects, spin-orbit coupling and correlation, to realize yet new phases of quantum matter. The first step towards these new physics is to understand the nature of correlated electrons in the presence of strong spin-orbit coupling. I will discuss about the emergence of novel spin-orbit coupled collective excitations supported by the iridates.