Conference highlights

Here are a few things I learnt this week:

Dirk Manske showed that it is very difficult to use electron-phonon coupling to simultaneously explain more than one set of experimental results in the cuprates. Those, such as Devereux and Shen (Stanford) who claim they can must use values for the coupling constants which are as much as an order of magnitude different from what electronic structure calculations give (a case of where the details matter). A nice (but perhaps understated) summary of the results is here.

Jurgen Haase showed how NMR experiments on the cuprates exhibit very large line widths which can be explained in terms of a large spatially inhomogeneous distribution of dopings. Here is one reference, but I would like to find others.
He did not discuss it but he is also a proponent (with Slichter and Williams) of the two-component model for the cuprates, supporting Baryzkin and Pines.

more to follow...