Dept. of Physics, Univ. of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA.

PHZ7428, Topics in Theoretical Physics (High-Tc Superconductivity), Spring 1995

Peter Hirschfeld

For those of you who need or want to look up papers from the lanl here click here.

Suggested Topics for 30-minute Class presentations

Presentations will tentatively be held evenings with dinner provided by SPS, two presentations per evening, time and place to be determined.

  1. Calculate the relaxation rate due to electron-electron collisions in a 3D and in a 2D Fermi liquid and compare. Need to include momentum conservation explicitly. See also more advanced questions: ``Is there a breakdown of Fermi liquid behavior in the two-dimensional Fermi gas?", JR Englebrecht and M Randeria, Phys. Rev. Lett. 66, 3225(1991).
  2. Crossover from BCS to Bose superconductivity. See de Melo, Randeria & Englebrecht, PRL 71, 3202 (1993).
  3. Normal state of underdoped HTSC as gas of preformed pairs. A.S. Alexandrov and N.F. Mott, Int J. Mod. Phys. B8, 2075 (1994).
  4. How do we really know that superconductivity is associated with planes and not "charge reservoir" layers? Alternative view of J. Dow, J.C. Phillips, others...
  5. The Fulde-Ferrell state: reentrant superconductivity in high fields.
  6. Review of Geserich et al. paper on optical spin waves in bilayer insulating materials. See me for paper.
  7. Ginzburg-Landau theory of vortex in d-wave superconductor. Papers by Kallin & Berlinsky, ... Volovik theory of H-dependent magnetic sp. ht.
  8. Stanford finite field sp. ht. expts. Moler et al. PRL 1995.
  9. Marginal Fermi liquid theory applied to optical conductivity: does it fit?
  10. Superconducting devices: which devices have actually been brought to market using HTSC materials? What are current practical problems?
  11. Single-particle vs. pair tunneling models & penetration depth.
  12. Photemission determination of the energy gap in HTSC. Gap in underdoped materials.
  13. Tc depression by impurities in optimally doped and underdoped materials Recent PRL by Japanese group. They find universal behavior for the underdoped materials in the Tc supression by Zn, no universality for the optimally doped materials. 2D-3D crossover? Y. Fukuzumi et al, PRL 76 684 (1996).
  14. Experimental constraints on dx^2-y^2 pairing state. Annett, Goldenfeld and Leggett, cond-mat/9601060. This is a very recent long review; any small part of it would be fine.
  15. Effect of Zn,Ni doping and electron irradiation on optical properties. Disorder vs. carrier density.
  16. Isotope effect in HTSC. See review by J.P. Frank in Ginsberg IV
  17. Critical behavior in a) specific heat; or b) penetration depth; or c) resistivity?
These are only random suggestions! You can give a talk on any paper on high Tc you want, only please discuss your choice with me first. Or on several papers or part of a review, just remember you should limit yourself to 1/2-hour.

Peter Hirschfeld
Mon Jan 1 21:41:52 EST 1996