This will be a joint seminar sponsored by the Department of Physics and BIRCK Nanotechnology Center.
Heavy fermion materials are so named because of the large effective mass exhibited
by the itinerant charge-carriers. The partially filled 4f and 5f shells of the rare earth lanthanides and actinides are responsible for the strong correlations that induce the large effective mass. I will briefly review experimental measurements of transport and thermodynamic properties of paramagnetic heavy fermions, comparing throughout with conventional Fermi liquid materials. Then I will describe the standard model, known as the periodic Anderson model for these systems, and some of our efforts in solving this model. I will present a comparison of our theory to experiments and conclude with a short discussion of future directions and open issues.