Electrodes for sealed secondary batteries

Self-supporting membrane electrode structures, in which active ingredients and graphite are incorporated in a polymeric matrix, improve performance of electrodes in miniature, sealed, alkaline storage batteries

Crossover from Luttinger- to Fermi-liquid behavior in strongly anisotropic systems in large dimensions

We consider the low-energy region of an array of Luttinger liquids coupled by a weak interchain hopping. The leading logarithmic divergences can be re-summed to all orders within a self-consistent perturbative expansion in the hopping, in the large-dimension limit. The anomalous exponent scales to zero below the one-particle crossover temperature. As a consequence, coherent quasiparticles with finite weight appear along the whole Fermi surface. Extending the expansion self-consistently to all orders turns out to be crucial in order to restore the correct Fermi-liquid behavior.Comment: Shortened version to appear in Physical Review Letter

Optical conductivity of one-dimensional Mott insulators

We calculate the optical conductivity of one-dimensional Mott insulators at low energies using a field theory description. The square root singularity at the optical gap, characteristic of band insulators, is generally absent and appears only at the Luther-Emery point. We also show that only few particle processes contribute significantly to the optical conductivity over a wide range of frequencies and that the bare perturbative regime is recovered only at very large energies. We discuss possible applications of our results to quasi one-dimensional organic conductors.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures results adde

Finite-temperature perturbation theory for quasi-one-dimensional spin-1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnets

We develop a finite-temperature perturbation theory for quasi-one-dimensional quantum spin systems, in the manner suggested by H.J. Schulz (1996) and use this formalism to study their dynamical response. The corrections to the random-phase approximation formula for the dynamical magnetic susceptibility obtained with this method involve multi-point correlation functions of the one-dimensional theory on which the random-phase approximation expansion is built. This ``anisotropic'' perturbation theory takes the form of a systematic high-temperature expansion. This formalism is first applied to the estimation of the N\'eel temperature of S=1/2 cubic lattice Heisenberg antiferromagnets. It is then applied to the compound Cs$_2$CuCl$_4$, a frustrated S=1/2 antiferromagnet with a Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya anisotropy. Using the next leading order to the random-phase approximation, we determine the improved values for the critical temperature and incommensurability. Despite the non-universal character of these quantities, the calculated values are different by less than a few percent from the experimental values for both compounds.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figure

Superconductivuty versus Tunneling in a Doped Antiferromagnetic Ladder

The low-energy charge excitations of a doped antiferromagnetic ladder are modeled by a system of interacting spinless fermions that live on the same ladder. A relatively large spin gap is assumed to ``freeze out'' all spin fluctuations. We find that the formation of rung hole pairs coincides with the opening of a single-particle gap for charge excitations along chains and with the absence of coherent tunneling in between chains. We also find that such hole pairs condense into either a crystalline or superconducting state as a function of the binding energy.Comment: 15 pgs. in PLAIN TeX, 2 figs. in postscript, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Spin-Density-Wave Phase Transitions in Quasi-One-Dimensional Dimerized Quarter-Filled Organic Conductors

We have studied spin density wave (SDW) phase transitions in dimerized quarter-filled Hubbard chains weakly coupled via interchain one-particle hopping, $t_{b0}$. It is shown that there exists a critical value of $t_{b0}$, $t_{b}^\ast$, between the incoherent metal regime ($t_{b0}<t_{b}^\ast$) and the Fermi liquid regime ($t_{b0}>t_{b}^\ast$) in the metallic phase above the SDW transition temperature. By using the 2-loop perturbative renormalization-group approach together with the random-phase-approximation, we propose a SDW phase diagram covering both of the regimes. The SDW phase transition from the incoherent metal phase for $t_{b0}<t_{b}^\ast$ is caused by growth of the intrachain electron-electron umklapp scattering toward low temperatures, which is regarded as preformation of the Mott gap. We discuss relevance of the present result to the SDW phase transitions in the quasi-one-dimensional dimerized quarter-filled organic conductors, (TMTTF)$_2$X and (TMTSF)$_2$X.Comment: 19 pages, 13 eps figures, uses jpsj.sty, corrected typo in the text and figures, no changes to the paper, to appear in J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. 68, No.8 (1999

Strong-Coupling Expansion for the Hubbard Model

A strong-coupling expansion for models of correlated electrons in any dimension is presented. The method is applied to the Hubbard model in $d$ dimensions and compared with numerical results in $d=1$. Third order expansion of the Green function suffices to exhibit both the Mott metal-insulator transition and a low-temperature regime where antiferromagnetic correlations are strong. It is predicted that some of the weak photoemission signals observed in one-dimensional systems such as $SrCuO_2$ should become stronger as temperature increases away from the spin-charge separated state.Comment: 4 pages, RevTex, 3 epsf figures include

Variable-range hopping in quasi-one-dimensional electron crystals

We study the effect of impurities on the ground state and the low-temperature dc transport in a 1D chain and quasi-1D systems of many parallel chains. We assume that strong interactions impose a short-range periodicicity of the electron positions. The long-range order of such an electron crystal (or equivalently, a $4 k_F$ charge-density wave) is destroyed by impurities. The 3D array of chains behaves differently at large and at small impurity concentrations $N$. At large $N$, impurities divide the chains into metallic rods. The low-temperature conductivity is due to the variable-range hopping of electrons between the rods. It obeys the Efros-Shklovskii (ES) law and increases exponentially as $N$ decreases. When $N$ is small, the metallic-rod picture of the ground state survives only in the form of rare clusters of atypically short rods. They are the source of low-energy charge excitations. In the bulk the charge excitations are gapped and the electron crystal is pinned collectively. A strongly anisotropic screening of the Coulomb potential produces an unconventional linear in energy Coulomb gap and a new law of the variable-range hopping $-\ln\sigma \sim (T_1 / T)^{2/5}$. $T_1$ remains constant over a finite range of impurity concentrations. At smaller $N$ the 2/5-law is replaced by the Mott law, where the conductivity gets suppressed as $N$ goes down. Thus, the overall dependence of $\sigma$ on $N$ is nonmonotonic. In 1D, the granular-rod picture and the ES apply at all $N$. The conductivity decreases exponentially with $N$. Our theory provides a qualitative explanation for the transport in organic charge-density wave compounds.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figures. (v1) The abstract is abridged to 24 lines. For the full abstract, see the manuscript (v2) several changes in presentation per referee's comments. No change in result

Interaction-induced Fermi surface deformations in quasi one-dimensional electronic systems

We consider serious conceptual problems with the application of standard perturbation theory, in its zero temperature version, to the computation of the dressed Fermi surface for an interacting electronic system. In order to overcome these difficulties, we set up a variational approach which is shown to be equivalent to the renormalized perturbation theory where the dressed Fermi surface is fixed by recursively computed counterterms. The physical picture that emerges is that couplings that are irrelevant tend to deform the Fermi surface in order to become more relevant (irrelevant couplings being those that do not exist at vanishing excitation energy because of kinematical constraints attached to the Fermi surface). These insights are incorporated in a renormalization group approach, which allows for a simple approximate computation of Fermi surface deformation in quasi one-dimensional electronic conductors. We also analyze flow equations for the effective couplings and quasiparticle weights. For systems away from half-filling, the flows show three regimes corresponding to a Luttinger liquid at high energies, a Fermi liquid, and a low-energy incommensurate spin-density wave. At half-filling Umklapp processes allow for a Mott insulator regime where the dressed Fermi surface is flat, implying a confined phase with vanishing effective transverse single-particle coherence. The boundary between the confined and Fermi liquid phases is found to occur for a bare transverse hopping amplitude of the order of the Mott charge gap of a single chain.Comment: 38 pages, 39 figures. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Effects of disorder on two strongly correlated coupled chains

We study the effects of disorder on a system of two coupled chain of strongly correlated fermions (ladder system), using renormalization group. The stability of the phases of the pure system is investigated as a function of interactions both for fermions with spin and spinless fermions. For spinless fermions the repulsive side is strongly localized whereas the system with attractive interactions is stable with respect to disorder, at variance with the single chain case. For fermions with spins, the repulsive side is also localized, and in particular the d-wave superconducting phase found for the pure system is totally destroyed by an arbitrarily small amount of disorder. On the other hand the attractive side is again remarkably stable with respect to localization. We have also computed the charge stiffness, the localization length and the temperature dependence of the conductivity for the various phases. In the range of parameter where d-wave superconductivity would occur for the pure system the conductivity is found to decrease monotonically with temperature, even at high temperature, and we discuss this surprising result. For a model with one site repulsion and nearest neighbor attraction, the most stable phase is an orbital antiferromagnet . Although this phase has no divergent superconducting fluctuation it can have a divergent conductivity at low temperature. We argue based on our results that the superconductivity observed in some two chain compounds cannot be a simple stabilization of the d-wave phase found for a pure single ladder. Applications to quantum wires are discussed.Comment: 47 pages, ReVTeX , 8 eps figures submitted to PR