University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Title: The Elusive Bose Metal

Abstract: The conventional theory of metals is in crisis. In the last 15 years, there has been an unexpected sprouting of metallic states in low dimensional systems directly contradicting conventional wisdom. For example, bosons are thought to exist in one of two ground states: condensed in a superconductor or localized in an insulator. However, several experiments on thin metal alloy films have observed that a metallic phase disrupts the direct transition between the superconductor and the insulator. Further, the experiments indicate that the charge carriers in this intermediate phase are bosonic. I will discuss how this intermediate phase is consistent with glassy ordering.