The off-campus meeting is held once a year in cooperation with a state university or other research institutions in Baden-Württemberg. This year, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is the partner. The event is open to the public, and admission is free.

Quantum entanglement is one of the most fascinating and, at the same time, most enigmatic phenomena in modern physics. Recent findings have shown that it is not only of central importance for quantum information processing but also plays a key role in understanding complex solids. In so-called quantum materials—systems with strongly correlated electrons, topological properties, or frustrated magnetic interactions—entanglement manifests itself in novel collective states of matter. These range from quantum spin liquids to topological superconductors and quantum-critical states. The lecture provides an overview of current theoretical and experimental developments, demonstrates how quantum entanglement serves as a tool for characterizing such states, and discusses prospects for the targeted control of entangled matter in the laboratory—a step toward a new era of quantum-mechanically interconnected materials.

Jörg Schmalian is the director of the Institute for Condensed Matter Theory (TKM) at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). His research group at TKM focuses on strongly correlated electron systems and complex quantum matter. He is also head of the Department of Quantum Materials Theory at the Institute for Quantum Materials and Technologies (IQMT) at KIT. Before coming to Karlsruhe in 2011, Schmalian was a full professor at Iowa State University and a senior scientist at the Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory. Jörg Schmalian serves on a number of international advisory boards and has been honored with several awards, including a Fellowship from the American Physical Society, the 2022 John Bardeen Prize Superconductivity Theory, the 2023Prize , as well as teaching awards from Iowa State University and KIT. He is a member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities.