For nearly four decades, the scientific community has been puzzled by a class of materials known as 'strange metals.' First observed approximately 40 years ago, these substances conduct electricity in a manner that contradicts the established rules of condensed matter physics.
Defying the Landau Theory
In conventional metals, electrical resistance is typically understood through the movement of individual electrons. However, strange metals exhibit a linear relationship between resistance and temperature that persists even at extreme scales, a phenomenon that the standard Landau Fermi-liquid theory fails to account for.
A New Paradigm for Electricity
Recent research into how and why these materials behave this way is forcing physicists to rethink the very nature of electrical flow. Unlike traditional conductors, the movement of charge in strange metals appears to be a collective, entangled process rather than the work of independent particles. These findings could lead to breakthroughs in our understanding of high-temperature superconductivity and the fundamental laws of the quantum universe.
