Special Condensed Matter Physics Seminar

3 p.m., Monday, April 23, 2001
Room 1201, Physics Building

Splintering the Electron in Two Dimensions

Matthew P. A. Fisher

(Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California at Santa Barbara)

Abstract: Simple insulators, semiconductors and metals are well described in terms of weakly interacting electron and hole excitations. But a number of new strongly correlated materials are "misfits" which apparently don't conform to this standard paradigm. In one scenario such materials manifest exotic phases that support excitations with fractional quantum numbers - the electron is effectively splintered into constituents which behave as free particles. In this talk I will describe a theoretical approach to 2d correlated electron systems that readily captures the physics of such fractionalized phases. Implications for the cuprate superconductors and the metal-insulator transition in Silicon MOSFETS will be briefly addressed.

Host: Sankar Das Sarma

Back to Condensed Matter Physics Seminar Home Page

http://www2.physics.umd.edu/~yakovenk/seminar/