Temperature dependent band structure of the Kondo insulator

We present a Qantum Monte Carlo (QMC) study of the temperature dependent dynamics of the Kondo insulator. Working at the so-called symmetrical point allows to perform minus-sign free QMC simulations and thus reach temperatures of less than 1% of the conduction electron bandwidth. Study of the temperature dependence of the single particle Green's function and dynamical spin correlation function shows a surprisingly intricate low temperature band structure and gives evidence for two characteristic temperatures, which we identify with the Kondo and coherence temperature, respectively. In particular, the data show a temperature induced metal-insulator transition at the coherence temperature.Comment: RevTex-file, 4 PRB pages with 4 eps figures. Hardcopies of figures (or the entire manuscript) can be obtained by e-mail request to: [email protected]

Risk Analyses and Risk Management - Slope Instabilities in Alpine Environments

Two prominent deep-seated gravitational slope deformations in the Eastern Alps (Tyrol, Austria) have been activated in the last seven years and pose serious threats to the densely populated valleys. Based on multidisciplinary field investigations, different hazard scenarios of slope failures have been evaluated for risk management processes. These event scenarios, which are characterised by strongly varying volumes of the failing slide masses as well as by different probabilities of occurrence, and varying disintegration factors control different accumulation and damage scenarios. Finally, these evaluations and risk analyses aimed to define “design events”, i.e. which scenarios are relevant for the dimensioning of mitigation measures. The main aim is to sustainably enable further land use, in comparison to the overall geohazard risks that are also present at several other sites in Tyrol (Austria)

Excitation spectrum of the homogeneous spin liquid

We discuss the excitation spectrum of a disordered, isotropic and translationally invariant spin state in the 2D Heisenberg antiferromagnet. The starting point is the nearest-neighbor RVB state which plays the role of the vacuum of the theory, in a similar sense as the Neel state is the vacuum for antiferromagnetic spin wave theory. We discuss the elementary excitations of this state and show that these are not Fermionic spin-1/2 `spinons' but spin-1 excited dimers which must be modeled by bond Bosons. We derive an effective Hamiltonian describing the excited dimers which is formally analogous to spin wave theory. Condensation of the bond-Bosons at zero temperature into the state with momentum (pi,pi) is shown to be equivalent to antiferromagnetic ordering. The latter is a key ingredient for a microscopic interpretation of Zhang's SO(5) theory of cuprate superconductivityComment: RevTex-file, 16 PRB pages with 13 embedded eps figures. Hardcopies of figures (or the entire manuscript) can be obtained by e-mail request to: [email protected]

Spin bags in the doped t-J model

We present a nonperturbative method for deriving a quasiparticle description of the low-energy excitations in the t-J model for strongly correlated electrons. Using the exact diagonalization technique we evaluated exactly the spectral functions of composite operators which describe an electron or hole dressed by antiferromagnetic spin fluctuations as expected in the string or spin bag picture. For hole doping up to $1/8$, use of the composite operators leads to a drastic simplification of the single particle spectral function: at half-filling it takes free-particle form, for the doped case it resembles a system of weakly interacting Fermions corresponding to the doped holes. We conclude that for all doping levels under study, the elementary electronic excitations next to the Fermi level are adequately described by the antiferromagnetic spin fluctuation picture and show that the dressing of the holes leads to formation of a bound state with d(x^2-y^2) symmetry.Comment: Remarks: Revtex file + 4 figures attached as compressed postscript files Figures can also be obtained by ordinary mail on reques

Dynamics of an SO(5) symmetric ladder model

We discuss properties of an exactly SO(5) symmetric ladder model. In the strong coupling limit we demonstrate how the SO(3)-symmetric description of spin ladders in terms of bond Bosons can be upgraded to an SO(5)-symmetric bond-Boson model, which provides a particularly simple example for the concept of SO(5) symmetry. Based on this representation we show that antiferro- magnetism on one hand and superconductivity on the other hand can be understood as condensation of either magnetic or charged Bosons into an RVB vacuum. We identify exact eigenstates of a finite cluster with general multiplets of the SO(5) group, and present numerical results for the single particle spectra and spin/charge correlation functions of the SO(5)-symmetric model and identify `fingerprints' of SO(5) symmetry in these. In particluar we show that SO(5) symmetry implies a `generalized rigid band behavior' of the photoemission spectrum, i.e. spectra for the doped case are rigorously identical to spectra for spin-polarized states at half-filling. We discuss the problem of adiabatic continuity between the SO(5) symmetric ladder and the actual t-J ladder and demonstrate the feasibility of a `Landau mapping' between the two models.Comment: Revtex-file, 16 pages with 15 eps-figures. Hardcopies of Figures (or the entire manuscript) obtainable by e-mail request to [email protected]

Interrelation of Superconducting and Antiferromagnetic Gaps in High-Tc Compounds: a Test Case for a Microscopic Theory

Recent angle resolved photoemission (ARPES) data, which found evidence for a d-wave-like modulation of the antiferromagnetic gap, suggest an intimate interrelation between the antiferromagnetic insulator and the superconductor with its d-wave gap. This poses a new challenge to microscopic descriptions, which should account for this correlation between, at first sight, very different states of matter. Here, we propose a microscopic mechanism which provides a definite correlation between these two different gap structures: it is shown that a projected SO(5) theory, which aims at unifying antiferromagnetism and d-wave superconductivity via a common symmetry principle while explicitly taking the Mott-Hubbard gap into account, correctly describes the observed gap characteristics. Specifically, it accounts for both the dispersion and the order of magnitude difference between the antiferromagnetic gap modulation and the superconducting gap.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure