Orbital physics: glorious past, bright future

Abstract

Transition metal (TM) compounds present a very big class of materials with quite diverse properties. There are among them insulators, metals, systems with insulator-metal transitions; most magnetic systems are TM compounds; there are among them also (high-T c ) superconductors. Their very rich properties are largely determined by the strong interplay of different degrees of freedom: charge; spin; orbital; lattice. Orbital effects play a very important role in these systemsand not only in them! The study of this field, initiated by Goodenough almost 70 years ago, turned out to be very fruitful and produced a lot of important results. In this short review I first discuss the basics of orbital physics, summarize the main achievements in this big field, in which Goodenough played a pivotal role and which are nowadays widely used to explain many properties of TM compounds. In the main part of the text I discuss novel developments and perspectives in orbital physics, which is still a very active field of research, constantly producing new surprises.