For nearly forty years, a class of materials known as “strange metals" has defied our understanding of how electrons move through solids. Unlike ordinary metals—such as copper, gold, or aluminum—in which conductivity depends primarily on defects in the material and the movement of atoms that disrupt the path of electrons, strange metals exhibit different behavior. Their relaxation rate* (a parameter that describes the frequency of electron collisions) appears to be governed solely by fundamental constants. Furthermore, their electrical resistivity decreases linearly down to temperatures close to absolute zero, deviating from the typical curve seen in ordinary metals. This behavior reflects a common physical mechanism that is observable in a wide variety of completely different systems, ranging from high-temperature superconductors, such as cuprates*, to artificial materials consisting of atomic layers stacked at a slight angle of rotation—known as “magic-angle" Moiré systems—and including cold-atom quantum simulators.

In this study, the expertise in “High-Performance Computing (HPC)" from researchers at CEA-Irig/MEM/L_SIM enabled the performance of large-scale numerical simulations of a theoretical model describing the behavior of electrons in these strongly correlated materials*. Their results suggest that this behavior is not limited to a specific category of materials, but manifests more broadly in strongly interacting systems whenever order (electronic, magnetic, or superconducting) is absent. Through their numerical calculations, the researchers were thus able to determine the origin of this behavior: the strangeness of these metals does not stem from the frequency of electron collisions, but simply from the quantum nature of their motion.

This study removes a fundamental obstacle to understanding the mechanisms underlying the unusual electronic properties of these materials. This strange metallic behavior is consistently observed at the boundaries of superconducting regions in the phase diagrams of these materials, suggesting that the two phenomena are closely linked. By shedding light on a mechanism that may be responsible for this strange metallicity, this work opens up new avenues for exploring what lies beyond this superconducting boundary.​

UMR : MEM (CEA, UGA).

Fundings : hours spent on the project GENCI 2025-AD010916992 .

Collaborations : Institut Néel-CNRS, Simone Fratini & Arnaud Ralko, Università dell'Aquila, Sergio Ciuchi.