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Introduction
Welcome
to the web pages of the Oxide Research Programme. The research programme is
a
collaborative effort between experimental and theoretical physicists, together
with material scientists, with the common goal of understanding of the behaviour
of correlated electrons in oxide materials. The work is distributed across the
collaborating institutions: at the University of St Andrews (School of Physics
and Astronomy), at the University of Birmingham (in the School of Physics and
Astronomy and also the School of Chemistry) and in the Low Temperature Physics
group at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. We also work with a number of
international collaborations. The experimental work is headed by Professor Andy
Mackenzie (St Andrews) and the theoretical work by Professor Andy Schofield
(Birmingham).
What are correlated
electrons?
The behaviour of electrons in solid materials is dominated by the rules of
quantum mechanics: they form a quantum fluid. (Other examples of quantum fluids
include neutrons in a neutron star and liquid helium.) In addition the Coulomb
repulsion between the electrons leads to important `correlations' which can
often lead to new types of properties. In condensed matter physics we often find
that the combination of interactions, quantum effects and local environment
(which is different in every material) leads to new types of behaviour and even
new types of `quantum particles' which govern the low energy and temperature
properties.
Why oxides?
The discovery of high-temperature superconductivity in layered copper oxide
materials has resulted in rapid advances in the field of oxide physics. Huge
improvements in the quality of single crystals of complex oxides have led to a
number of remarkable discoveries. It seems that within the more general class of
oxide compounds lie almost all of the known strongly correlated states of matter
- from conventional Fermi liquid type metals, to correlated (Mott) insulators,
from ordered magnets to superconductors. In addition, a growing number of new
states of matter have emerged---unconventional superconductivity (both singlet
and triplet) and possibly new types of non-Fermi liquid metallic states. This
behaviour seems to be driven by strong inter-electron repulsion combined with
reduced effective dimensionality. In short, the oxides appear to be the ideal
test-bed to study many of the puzzles facing us in trying to understand
correlated matter.
Further Reading
The
Theory of Everything, R. B. Laughlin and David Pines, PNAS 97, 29 (2000).
1+1=3? The frontier
science of emergent materials, P. Coleman, A public lecture delivered at Aspen,
January 2000.
Non-Fermi liquids, A. J. Schofield,
Contemporary Physics, 40, 95 (1999).
An analogue of superfluid
3He, Maurice Rice, Nature, 396, 627 (1998).
Unconventional
Superconductivity, J. F. Annett, Contemporary Physics, 36, 423 (1995).
This page is maintained by the
Theoretical Physics Research Group.
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