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Nature Physics 4, 167–169 (1 March 2008) | doi:10.1038/nphys908

Fishing the Fermi sea

Paul C. Canfield

Within the field of solid-state physics, the discovery of remarkable phases and transitions is often tightly coupled to the design, discovery and growth of novel materials. The past several decades of work in the field of correlated electron physics — that is, the study of materials in which the interactions are sufficiently strong that conventional single-electron theories don't apply — can be described by a list of materials that have defined new extremes, be it extremes of temperature, field, pressure, complexity or, even better, simplicity.