  Strongly correlated quantum fluids are phases of matter that are
intrinsically quantum mechanical, and that do not have a simple description in
terms of weakly interacting quasi-particles. Two systems that have recently
attracted a great deal of interest are the quark-gluon plasma, a plasma of
strongly interacting quarks and gluons produced in relativistic heavy ion
collisions, and ultracold atomic Fermi gases, very dilute clouds of atomic
gases confined in optical or magnetic traps. These systems differ by more than
20 orders of magnitude in temperature, but they were shown to exhibit very
similar hydrodynamic flow. In particular, both fluids exhibit a robustly low
shear viscosity to entropy density ratio which is characteristic of quantum
fluids described by holographic duality, a mapping from strongly correlated
quantum field theories to weakly curved higher dimensional classical gravity.
This review explores the connection between these fields, and it also serves as
an introduction to the Focus Issue of New Journal of Physics on Strongly
Correlated Quantum Fluids: from Ultracold Quantum Gases to QCD Plasmas. The
presentation is made accessible to the general physics reader and includes
discussions of the latest research developments in all three areas.
