Uploaded March 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
A single piece of metal is composed of roughly atoms—an astronomical number of moving parts, all bound together in a delicate dance.
For decades, we thought we understood the choreography. Whether it’s silver or gold, we’ve relied on the ""Fermi liquid theory."" It treats electrons like independent travellers, moving through a crowd without ever really bumping into one another. It’s simple. It’s elegant. And in the world of modern physics, it’s starting to fail.
We are entering the era of ""Strange Metals""—materials that conduct electricity but seem to have no individual electrons at all. They are the ""Standard Model"" rebels of condensed matter physics. Without a map to understand them, our progress in quantum computing and energy hits a dead end.
But at TU Wien, a new alliance is forming. The SFB ""Correlated Quantum Materials & Solid State Quantum Systems"" is attacking this mystery from a radical angle. If the old laws are broken, it’s time to write new ones.
SFB Q-M&S q-ms.org
ERC CorMeTop https://www.tuwien.at/en/research/successes/erc-grants/cormetop
Group of Silke Bühler-Paschen https://www.tuwien.at/en/phy/ifp/quantum-materials
A single piece of metal is composed of roughly atoms—an astronomical number of moving parts, all bound together in a delicate dance.
For decades, we thought we understood the choreography. Whether it’s silver or gold, we’ve relied on the ""Fermi liquid theory."" It treats electrons like independent travellers, moving through a crowd without ever really bumping into one another. It’s simple. It’s elegant. And in the world of modern physics, it’s starting to fail.
We are entering the era of ""Strange Metals""—materials that conduct electricity but seem to have no individual electrons at all. They are the ""Standard Model"" rebels of condensed matter physics. Without a map to understand them, our progress in quantum computing and energy hits a dead end.
But at TU Wien, a new alliance is forming. The SFB ""Correlated Quantum Materials & Solid State Quantum Systems"" is attacking this mystery from a radical angle. If the old laws are broken, it’s time to write new ones.
SFB Q-M&S q-ms.org
ERC CorMeTop https://www.tuwien.at/en/research/successes/erc-grants/cormetop
Group of Silke Bühler-Paschen https://www.tuwien.at/en/phy/ifp/quantum-materials
