Strongly Coupled Quantum Matter a new subfield of physics

Traditional descriptions of quantum matter rely heavily on particle based approaches which have been extremely successful to describe nature Recently however it has become clear that there is an ever growing class of strongly interacting systems where particle based descriptions do not work such as quark gluon plasmas near Tc cold quantum gases near unitarity and high Tc superconductors Experimental evidence suggests that despite their different constituents temperature and densities these systems share common properties such as very similar viscosity over entropy ratios In this talk I will argue that these systems belong to a common and new subfield of strongly coupled quantum matter requiring a new set of tools such as gauge gravity duality and point out some successes of this approach Refreshments are served at 3:20pm