2026 eQMA School on Electron Correlations and Topology

Scope and Objectives:

The premise of the proposed school is that now is an opportune time for junior researchers from the community of correlation physics to be exposed to topological aspects of physics, and likewise for those from the topology community to correlation physics. By introducing the basic concepts and showcasing the emerging frontiers, the school will educate a cohort of junior researchers, and, over the long run, help push the quantum matter field to confront the outstanding challenges and realize the enormous opportunities that develop at the intersection of strong correlations and topology.

Recent years have seen increasing recognition of the exciting potential in merging strong correlations beyond the single-particle picture and the topology of electronic wavefunctions. While our understanding of strongly correlated electronic systems has benefited from the research activities of materials such as quantum Hall, cuprate and heavy fermion systems, the emergence of topological semimetals, moiré materials and kagome metals has brought new surprises, puzzles, and challenges. These exciting developments have fueled the community working on quantum materials to develop new experimental methodologies to better characterize these systems, and posed new theoretical questions, such as the classification and generation of electronic topology in the strongly correlated regime and efficient, reliable numerical methods for simulating these systems.

The school will bring together a diverse pool of theoretical- and experimental-physics experts on various aspects of electronic correlation and topology to deliver lectures on the exciting progress made so far and to chart future directions. The school will discuss a variety of topics, including:

- Correlated systems from basic notions to advanced studies

- Novel material platforms for realizing topological flat band systems

- Theoretical modeling of correlated topology

- Novel experimental probes of new correlated topological phases

- Quantum entanglement of strongly correlated matter

- Out of equilibrium dynamics of many-body systems

The invited lecturers are listed below. The school will last for three days and a half. In addition to the lectures, we expect to incorporate several seminars on frontier topics and select several contributed talks from contributed abstracts. The scientific program will start in the morning on Tuesday, March 24, and conclude by noon on Friday, March 27.

Invited Lecturers:

A tentative list of the lecturers and the respective topics they will cover are as follows:

· Peter Armitage (Johns Hopkins U.) (Correlation physics – introduction to experiment)

· TBA (Correlation physics – introduction to theory)

· Joel E. Moore (University of California, Berkeley) (Topological band physics—an introduction)

· Fiona Burnell (U. Minnesota) (Interacting topology—an introduction)

· Dmitri (Dima) Efetov (LMU München, Germany)(Moiré materials – progress in experiment)

· Philipp Werner (U. Fribourg, Switzerland) (Correlated systems away from equilibrium—an introduction)

***More lecturers will be announced as they are confirmed***

Invited Seminar Speakers:

· Pengcheng Dai (Rice U.)

· Alex Thomson (University of California, Davis)

· Maia G. Vergniory (U. Sherbrook, Canada)

· Ming Yi (Rice U.)

· More speakers to be announced

Registration:

Registration fee: $35 for Rice affiliates (please make sure to use your Rice email for registration) and $100 for non-Rice attendees.

Housing: $420 (double occupancy, from March 23 to March 27. Single occupancy available upon request).

Organizers:

Yonglong Xie (Rice University)

Alex Thomson (University of California, Davis)

Kuan-Sen Lin (Rice University)

Fang Xie (Rice University)

Maia G. Vergniory (U. Sherbrooke, Canada) (Scientific Advisor)

Qimiao Si (Rice University) (Scientific Advisor)