At their August ICAM workshop on 1-1-5 materials, thirty researchers in heavy-electron physics worked out the final details on a proposal to the NSF for a new type of Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC), to study heavy-electron materials. Unlike earlier models of the MRSEC, this center would not be located in one place but, using networking and communications tools, would link together 14 research institutions, all of which are ICAM branches. Thus the group chose as the name for their proposed Center, DCHEM, The Distributed Center for Heavy Electron Materials. The Center would be led by Zachary Fisk, U C Irvine, who will serve as its Director, and Meigan Aronson, SUNY Stony Brook, who will be its Deputy director, and administered at UC Irvine.

Participating institutions include UC Davis, UC Irvine, UC Riverside, UC San Diego, Cornell University, Florida State University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Johns Hopkins University, Louisiana State University, University of Michigan, Princeton University, Rice University, Rutgers University, and SUNY Stony Brook. There would also be ties with national laboratories—at Los Alamos, Ames Laboratory, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory—and the following ICAM overseas affiliates and collaborators: University of Cambridge; CEA, Saclay; MPI for Chemical Physics, Dresden; Ecole Polytechnique, Paris; Edinburgh University; ETH, Zurich; ISSP, University of Tokyo; University of Karlsruhe; Kyoto University; University of Madrid; Université de Paris, Orsay; Forschungszentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (FZD); and University of St. Andrews.

Three interdisciplinary research groups are proposed in which senior and junior investigators could work together, following the ICAM model. A group studying quantum phases and their transitions would be headed by J. W. Allen and M. Aronson; an unconventional superconductivity group would be headed by D. M. Basov and Z. Fisk; a theory group would be headed by G. Kotliar and J. Schmalian. David Pines would oversee education and outreach.

The proposal to NSF, which was submitted in early September, emphasizes the significance of heavy-electron materials as a paradigm for correlated electron systems and their advantages as a research medium. These materials, based on f-electron rare-earth and actinide atoms, also have huge potential for new applications in still-higher-temperature superconductors, magnetic switches, and optical detection devices.

By Karie Friedman, ICAMNews