Semiclassical theory of the tunneling anomaly in partially spin-polarized compressible quantum Hall states

Electron tunneling into a system with strong interactions is known to exhibit an anomaly, in which the tunneling conductance vanishes continuously at low energy due to many-body interactions. Recent measurements have probed this anomaly in a quantum Hall bilayer of the half-filled Landau level, and shown that the anomaly apparently gets stronger as the half-filled Landau level is increasingly spin polarized. Motivated by this result, we construct a semiclassical hydrodynamic theory of the tunneling anomaly in terms of the charge-spreading action associated with tunneling between two copies of the Halperin-Lee-Read state with partial spin polarization. This theory is complementary to our recent work (arXiv:1709.06091) where the electron spectral function was computed directly using an instanton-based approach. Our results show that the experimental observation cannot be understood within conventional theories of the tunneling anomaly, in which the spreading of the injected charge is driven by the mean-field Coulomb energy. However, we identify a qualitatively new regime, in which the mean-field Coulomb energy is effectively quenched and the tunneling anomaly is dominated by the finite compressibility of the composite Fermion liquid.Comment: 24 pages, 2 figures; Final published versio

Effect of magnetization on the tunneling anomaly in compressible quantum Hall states

Tunneling of electrons into a two-dimensional electron system is known to exhibit an anomaly at low bias, in which the tunneling conductance vanishes due to a many-body interaction effect. Recent experiments have measured this anomaly between two copies of the half-filled Landau level as a function of in-plane magnetic field, and they suggest that increasing spin polarization drives a deeper suppression of tunneling. Here we present a theory of the tunneling anomaly between two copies of the partially spin-polarized Halperin-Lee-Read state, and we show that the conventional description of the tunneling anomaly, based on the Coulomb self-energy of the injected charge packet, is inconsistent with the experimental observation. We propose that the experiment is operating in a different regime, not previously considered, in which the charge-spreading action is determined by the compressibility of the composite fermions.Comment: (5+1) pages, 1 figure; (v2) minor changes and added reference to our accompanying paper arXiv:1712.02357; (v3) Final published versio

The Distributional Effects of Medicare

The Medicare program is now an important source of transfers to elderly and disabled beneficiaries, and will continue to grow rapidly in the future. Because the Medicare program is so large in magnitude, it can have significant redistributional effects. In this paper, we measure the flow of Medicare benefits to high-income and low-income neighborhoods in 1990 and 1995. We find that Medicare spending per capita for the lowest income groups grew much more rapidly than Medicare spending in either high income or middle income neighborhoods. Home health care spending played an important role in the increased spending among the lowest income neighborhoods. To our knowledge, this differential shift in spending has not been documented, yet it exceeds in magnitude the entire per capita transfer from the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and is half of the average transfers to the elderly poor from Supplemental Security Income (SSI). Recent cutbacks in home health care benefits may undo some of this change. Still, this example illustrates how specific technical changes in Medicare policy can have redistributional effects comparable to major and much more visible expenditure and tax policies.

Review of La novela naturalista hispanoamericana, by Manuel Prendes

In his study, Prendes undertakes an analysis of the naturalist movement in Spanish America. The introduction sets the literary and socio-historical context for his study by briefly discussing other literary movements in nineteenth-century Spanish America and by commenting on the ways that politics and social thought influenced novelists. Prendes then reviews the extant criticism about naturalism, focusing on criticism published in Spanish, although the bibliography includes references to several critical works written in French and English. He aptly points out that Spanish American naturalist writers have begun to receive more critical attention in the past couple of decades, although he does not connect this to the fairly recent surge of interest in nineteenth-century Latin American literature in general

Constructions of Domesticity in Nineteenth-Century Spanish America

It is by now a commonplace that in nineteenth-century Spanish American literature the family serves as a metaphor for the nation and that authors express their political agendas through allegories of courtship and marriage. In such readings, potential love matches symbolize the reconciliation of contesting political or ethnic groups and point toward ways for the newly-formed Spanish American nations to negotiate difference without falling into civil war. Most notably, Doris Sommer\u27s Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America succinctly explains her project-subsequently taken up and adapted by a generation of critics-as one that wishes to locate an erotics of politics, to show how a variety of novel national ideals are all ostensibly grounded in \u27natural\u27 heterosexual love and in the marriages that provided a figure for apparently nonviolent consolidation during internecine conflicts at midcentury (6). At its core Sommer\u27s interpretations of what she identifies as the key novels in nineteenth- century Spanish America are concerned with courtship and the process of arriving-or fu.iling to arrive-at successful matches. Her analysis concentrates on erotic love and the ways by which lovers overcome obstacles to marry and thus consummate the political unions signified by their personal relationships. As she says, Erotic passion was [... an] opportunity (rhetorical and otherwise) to bind together heterodox constituencies: competing regions, economic interests, races, religions (14). Her work focuses, then, on the characters\u27 struggles to lay claim to their love objects and on the resolution of those struggles in matrimony. Foundational Fictions offers a highly convincing analysis of Latin America\u27s national novels and a rubric for further literary criticism that ties together representations of personal and political events

MLA Interviews From the Candidiates Point of View

This article is based on Lee Skinner\u27s presentation at the 1998 MLA convention in San Francisco, California

Review of Building Nineteenth-Century Latin America: Re-Rooted Cultures, Identities, and Nations

Recent years have seen the publication of several excellent collections of essays devoted to nineteenth-century Latin American cultural studies. Works such as Beyond Imagined Communities: Reading and Writing the Nation in Nineteenth-Century Latin America, edited by Sara Castro-Klarén and John Charles Chasteen, and special numbers of journals such as Revista Iberoamericana’s issue on cultural change and periodical reading in nineteenth-century Latin America (January–March 2006), to adduce but two examples, have amplified our understanding of the complex ways in which hegemonic and nonhegemonic discourses functioned in the nineteenth century and how the divisions between elite and popular cultures were constructed and deconstructed. This collective scholarly labor has also done much to counteract and supplement the persuasive and powerful, but often totalizing, interpretations proposed by Benedict Anderson in Imagined Communities and Doris Sommer in Foundational Fictions. Acree and González Espitia’s anthology may now be added to the extant corpus of such volumes. Building Nineteenth-Century Latin America unites essays by historians and literary and cultural critics, all of whom examine different discursive phenomena from within rather than from without. The works have in common their desire to offer insight into movements, groups, and sociocultural manifestations that to date have not been studied from a cultural studies perspective. Thus Patricia Lapolla Swier’s essay on José Martí finds space next to González Espitia’s piece analyzing representations of syphilis in both “high” culture (poetry, fiction) and “low” culture (magazine advertisements). Indeed, the chapters here also share the refusal to privilege one form of discourse over another. It is welcome to find a collection offering essays that vary widely in terms of content, but that also maintain a similar theoretical approach

Pandora\u27s Log: Charting the Evolving Literary Project of Rosario Ferré

In her essay La Cocina de la escritura, published in 1982, Rosario Ferré describes her authorial project, her literary influences and her motivations for writing fiction. As part of this short autobiographical essay, she discusses the moment she embarked upon her career as a writer and the way she selected her initial literary theme

“Identity, Nation, and Revolution in Latin America.” Review of Feminism and the Legacy of Revolution: Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chiapas by Karen Kampwirth, Women, Creole Identity, and Intellectual Life in Early Twentieth-Century Puerto Rico by Magali Roy-Féquière, The Revolution Question: Feminisms in El Salvador, Chile and Cuba by Julie D. Shayne, and My Life as a Colombian Revolutionary: Reflections of a Former Guerrillera by María Eugenia Vásquez Perdomo, trans. Lorena Terando.

Women\u27s relationships to the state, to their societies, and to the construction of national discourses continue to provide topics for at-times-heated debates. On the one hand, generalizing about women in such a way as to claim that all women have a particular type of connection to political or social phenomena runs the risk of subsuming certain categories of difference—racial, ethnic, class, sexual—at the same time that it attempts to highlight gender difference. On the other hand, refusing to make any kind of statement about the issues faced by groups of women as they negotiate their relationships with the political movements, countries, and social structures surrounding them also leads to a critical dead end. Four recent books walk this tightrope in varying ways as they address the topic of gender and national construction and discourse