Condensed Matter Physics in the Alps: Geometric Frustration, Topology, Flat Bands, and Correlation in Kagome and Van der Waals Systems

Session

Thursday Afternoon Session, Chair Q. Si

8 Jan 2026, 17:00

Saas Fee

42. Fractional Chern insulator edges: crystalline effects and optical measurement

Johannes Motruk (University of Geneva)

08/01/2026, 17:00

Theory

Contributed talk

Edge states of chiral topologically ordered phases are commonly described by chiral Luttinger liquids, an effective theory that is exact only in the conformal limit; but in crystalline systems, deviations from simple power-law scaling of correlators generally emerge. Motivated by recent bulk observations of fractional Chern insulators in two-dimensional materials, we revisit this framework on...

41. Disorder is both friend and foe to melting of Wigner-Mott insulators

Vladimir Dobrosavljevic (Florida State University)

08/01/2026, 17:20

Theory

Invited talk (by invitation only)

Wigner crystals are extremely fragile, which is shown to result from very strong geometric frustration germane to long-range Coulomb interactions. Physically, this is manifested by a very small characteristic energy scale for sheer density fluctuations, which are gapless excitations in a translationally invariant system. The presence of disorder, however, breaks translational invariance, thus...

35. A New Perspective on Correlated Metals: from Concealed Mott Quantum Criticality to Disorder in Heavy Fermi Liquids

Louk Rademaker (Université de Genève)

08/01/2026, 17:55

Theory

Contributed talk

The band-structure picture of metals is very successful in many materials where the electron correlations are weak. On the other extreme, when correlations are very strong, one expects interaction-induced insulators – due to Mott localization or symmetry breaking. However, the intermediate regime where correlations are strong but the material remains gapless, harbors many open questions in our...