\begin{pseudochapter}{Acknowledgements}
    A doctoral degree does not happen in a vacuum, and this work is the fruit of the involvement of numerous people with whom I was incredibly fortunate to have crossed paths.

    % Back in the day we had a group member, Soroush, that from time to time would refer to Hans as "the Hans". That continued long after he had left, as some kind of inside joke, an amusing way of referring to our supervisor. 
    First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor, \textit{the} Hans, for the opportunity of working on such fascinating and challenging topics. I am particularly thankful for the great freedom I was entrusted with, as well as his consistent support, insight, and patience in guiding our research route.

    % Even though historically known as slave particles, we don't want to get cancelled if we ever get important jobs later in life so Tim actually decided in his thesis to start calling them auxiliary particles. We were, however, enslaved by their mystical (aka bullshit) properties
    Secondly, I want to thank my fellow \textit{enslaved-by-the-slaves} comrades, Tim and Micha, for all the countless hours of discussions, puzzlement and dismay. In part, this work is as much mine as theirs.
    % I worked closely with Marvin and Michael when obtaining a clear picture of __dynamical__ mean-field theory in equilibrium. A main problem of NCA + DMFT is that the Kondo peak actually has a __spurious__ divergence at the Fermi energy for temperatures lower than the Kondo temperature.
    I must also extend my gratitude to my office mate Michael, who had to put up with my jeremiads and lent a hand and more in the very last stretch. And also to Marvin, dragged as well into so many \textit{spurious} problems, and to the rest of our group, that always made our work environment such a bubbly and exciting place.

    % Ammar used to refer to the PhDs before him as old Gods -- I am only keeping the tradition alive.
    Many thanks to the \textit{old Gods}, Lai for opening the door to my short and fruitful stay at Fudan University, warm-welcomed and made possible by prof. Xiaopeng Li, and Ammar for questioning the allegedly obvious. A word of appreciation as well to the holy trinity Wei{\ss}-Z{\"u}ndorf-Wi{\ss}kirchen of the Physikalisches Institut, who made sure everything always ran smoothly, and to Prof.~David Luitz for affably accepting to be on my thesis committee.
    
    Lastly, a big shout out to my partner in crime, Ghassan, and so many friends who were a vital source of sanity and festivity. To all my educators, and to my brother, parents and Mariana, for all the love and everything else.
\end{pseudochapter}