Frontiers in Correlated Matter:

The central part of the meeting was a set of scientific discussions, in which each speaker was invited to lead an interactive discussion about the questions surrounding their research. Several members of the science outreach community were also invited to participate in the meeting. In a small outreach workshop which proceeded the meeting, there were several lively and optimistic series of discussions between condensed matter physicists and members of the museum community, artists and film makers interested in telling the story of correlated matter.

This meeting presented exciting problems for the physicists working on the behavior of matter.  In general the work focused on newer kinds of materials than familiar liquids, gases, and solids.  About a third of the meeting concerned quantum or "hard" condensed matter, where a large focus of the research concern the collective behavior of quantum matter.  This work is focused upon a few model classes of materials, picked to be representative of the problems and opportunities
offered by quantum materials.  The present work is an attempt to understand and then use the unfamiliar properties of quantum mechanics to create entirely new classes of materials with interesting and useable quantum properties.  The materials and processes discussed in the "soft" side covered the range from the familiar but-not-yet- understood properties of glasses to the rich and largely unexplored worlds of biological phenomena. A substantial fraction of this work is aimed at understanding how memories might be built into materials.   In all these cases, the present studies will in the short run give us understanding of basic principles of organization--- principles which will in the longer run help in the construction of useful materials.

The meeting ended with a wide ranging discussion about the big questions of correlated matter, and the challenge of presenting this field as a frontier science. A list of "millennium questions in physics" proposed by String Theorists four years ago attracted wide media attention - yet not a single one concerned the challenges of condensed matter. Despite the profound impact of condensed matter physics has had on fundamental science, notably for its role in generating concepts that have influenced particle physics, cosmology, biology and computer science - in the public eye it is seen as a primarily technological activity.  There is clearly an appeal behind a set of big questions that convey the  aspirations of this frontier field, but still some expressed reservations.  Leo Kadanoff of Chicago and Michael Brenner of Harvard cautioned that many breakthroughs come from the  little questions that lead to big answers.  Pierre Hohenberg of New York University expressed the need to divide such questions into "inreach" questions - more detailed issues that can be used to inspire research and attract bright students - from "outreach" questions that are broadly stated for the public. Here are the eleven big questions that were tentatively discussed: