689 research outputs found
Long-serving mayors in Japan : an alternative leadership?
There are negative images if one particular politician stays for a long period in
one public position. Long-serving is usually associated with nepotism, patron-client
relations, corruption, low quality of public service and inefficiency.
A survey in two Japanese city halls reveals that civil servants are of the opinion that
personnel administration was fair and they were given freedom to implement policies
under long-serving mayors. They could keep good relations with local legislative bodies.
Thus civil servants did not experience strong pressure from the legislature’s members.
Long-serving mayors could use their long-serving experience as political resource.
There is an alternative style of leadership at the local government level in Japan.
Maybe a bottom-up and consensus-based, i.e., invisible leadership, is old-fashioned.
However, an alternative leadership style can provide an alternative, resolving
complicated problems through real results
Metal-insulator transition in PrRuP and SmRuP investigated by optical spectroscopy
Electronic structures of the filled-skutterudite compounds PrRuP
and SmRuP, which undergo a metal-insulator transition (MIT) at
= 60 K and 16 K, respectively, have been studied by means of
optical spectroscopy. Their optical conductivity spectra develop an energy gap
of 10 meV below . The observed characteristics of the energy
gap are qualitatively different from those of the Kondo semiconductors. In
addition, optical phonon peaks in the spectra show anomalies upon the MIT,
including broadening and shifts at and an appearance of new peaks
below . These results are discussed in terms of density waves or
orbital ordering previously predicted for these compounds.Comment: 4pages, 4figures, submitted to Physical Review
Optical Conductivity and Electronic Structure of CeRu4Sb12 under High Pressure
Optical conductivity [s(w)] of Ce-filled skutterudite CeRu4Sb12 has been
measured at high pressure to 8 GPa and at low temperature, to probe the
pressure evolution of its electronic structures. At ambient pressure, a
mid-infrared peak at 0.1 eV was formed in s(w) at low temperature, and the
spectral weight below 0.1 eV was strongly suppressed, due to a hybridization of
the f electron and conduction electron states. With increasing external
pressure, the mid-infrared peak shifts to higher energy, and the spectral
weight below the peak was further depleted. The obtained spectral data are
analyzed in comparison with band calculation result and other reported physical
properties. It is shown that the electronic structure of CeRu4Sb12 becomes
similar to that of a narrow-gap semiconductor under external pressure.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figure
Universal scaling in the dynamical conductivity of heavy fermion Ce and Yb compounds
Dynamical conductivity spectra s(w) have been measured for a diverse range of
heavy-fermion (HF) Ce and Yb compounds. A characteristic excitation peak has
been observed in the mid-infrared region of s(w) for all the compounds, and has
been analyzed in terms of a simple model based on conduction (c)-f electron
hybridized band. A universal scaling is found between the observed peak
energies and the estimated c-f hybridization strengths of these HF compounds.
This scaling demonstrates that the model of c-f hybridized band can generally
and quantitatively describe the charge excitation spectra of a wide range of HF
compounds.Comment: 5 pages, 1 table, 3 figures, to appear in J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. 76
(2007
Inelastic neutron scattering studies of Crystal Field Levels in PrOsAs
We use neutron scattering to study the Pr crystalline electric field
(CEF) excitations in the filled skutterudite PrOsAs. By comparing
the observed levels and their strengths under neutron excitation with the
theoretical spectrum and neutron excitation intensities, we identify the
Pr CEF levels, and show that the ground state is a magnetic
triplet, and the excited states ,
and are at 0.4, 13 and 23 meV, respectively. A comparison of the
observed CEF levels in PrOsAs with the heavy fermion superconductor
PrOsSb reveals the microscopic origin of the differences in the
ground states of these two filled skutterudites.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figure
Slater to Mott crossover in the metal to insulator transition of Nd2Ir2O7
We present an angle-resolved photoemission study of the electronic structure
of the three-dimensional pyrochlore iridate Nd2Ir2O7 through its magnetic
metal-insulator transition. Our data reveal that metallic Nd2Ir2O7 has a
quadratic band, touching the Fermi level at the Gamma point, similarly to that
of Pr2Ir2O7. The Fermi node state is, therefore, a common feature of the
metallic phase of the pyrochlore iridates. Upon cooling below the transition
temperature, this compound exhibits a gap opening with an energy shift of
quasiparticle peaks like a band gap insulator. The quasiparticle peaks are
strongly suppressed, however, with further decrease of temperature, and
eventually vanish at the lowest temperature, leaving a non-dispersive flat band
lacking long-lived electrons. We thereby identify a remarkable crossover from
Slater to Mott insulators with decreasing temperature. These observations
explain the puzzling absence of Weyl points in this material, despite its
proximity to the zero temperature metal-insulator transition
Superconductivity of the One-Dimensional d-p Model with p-p transfer
Using the numerical diagonalization method, we investigate the
one-dimensional - model, simulating a Cu-O linear chain with strong
Coulomb repulsions. Paying attention to the effect of the transfer energy
between the nearest neighbor oxygen-sites, we calculate the critical
exponent of correlation functions based on the Luttinger liquid
relations and the ground state energy as a function of an external
flux . We find that the transfer increases the charge
susceptibility and the exponent in cooperation with the repulsion
at Cu-site. We also show that anomalous flux quantization occurs for
. The superconducting region is presented on a phase diagram of
vs. plane.Comment: 4 pages, RevTex + 5 PS figures include
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