Chemical Physicists Quantitatively Model Electron Interactions in Real Quantum Materials

Caltech News reports that researchers from Caltech and Yale have, for the first time, accurately quantified the Kondo effect — a quantum phenomenon where a magnetic impurity in a metal causes resistance to rise at low temperatures — for real materials. The team used the actual atomic and electronic structures of the materials rather than simplified models, and their predictions for seven different transition-metal atoms embedded in copper were up to two orders of magnitude more accurate than previous approaches. The work, published in the July thirtieth issue of Science, is described as a baby step toward simulating more complex quantum materials like high-temperature superconductors, where electron interactions are too sensitive to average out.

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