Message from Robert A Scalapino on the Occasion of the Inauguration of the Ulaanbaatar Forum for East Asia

DOI: 10.5564/mjia.v0i13.2Mongolian Journal of International Affairs No.13 2006 pp.5-

The Japanese Domestic Scene and Foreign Policy

Ours is an era when the relation between a nation's domestic condition and its foreign policies has become increasingly close. Japan is no exception. That nation's post-1945 leadership, political institutions, and economic policies have combined with a cultural legacy, modified but still influential, to provide the foundations of contemporary Japanese foreign policy. While aspects of that foreign policy are now under intensive review and may undergo substantial alterations in the years immediately ahead, such development cannot diverge greatly from the indigenous sources that provide them with support

Numerical Simulations of Quantum Many-body Systems

The goals of our DOE work were to develop numerical tools in order to (1) determine the actual phase of particular many-electron models and (2) to understand the underlying mechanisms responsible for the observed phases. Over the years, DOE funds provided support for a number of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows who have gone on to continue and extend this effort. Looking back, they were more successful in determining the types of correlations that developed in particular models and less successful in establishing the underlying mechanisms. For example, they found clear evidence for antiferromagnetism, d{sub x{sup 3}-y{sup 2}}-pairing correlations, and stripes in various t-t{prime}-J and Hubbard models. Here, the stripes consisted of 1/2-filled domain walls of holes separated by {pi}-phase shifted antiferromagnetic regions. They found that a next-near-neighbor hopping t{prime} with t{prime}/t > 0 suppressed the stripes and favored the d{sub x{sup 3}-y{sup 2}}-pairing correlations. They studied a model of a CuO, 2-leg ladder and found that d{sub x{sup 3}-y{sup 2}} correlations formed when the system was doped with either electrons or holes. Another example that they studied was a two-dimensional spin 1/2 easy plane model with a near-neighbor exchange J and a four-site ring exchange K. In this J-K model, as K/J is increased, one moves from XY order to stripe order and to Ising antiferromagnetic order. They are still exploring the unusual transition between the Xy and striped phase. The key feature that we found was that strongly-correlated, many-electron systems are 'delicately balanced' between different possible phases. They also believe that their work provides strong support in favor of Anderson's suggestion that the Hubbard model contains the basic physics of the cuprates. That is, it exhibits antiferromagnetism, d{sub x{sup 3}-y{sup 2}}-pairing correlations, and stripes as the half-filled model is doped with holes. They were not as successful in determining the basic mechanisms. Specifically, they sought to determine the basic pairing mechanism. They tried various approaches and concluded that the spin-fluctuations play a central role. However, it was only recently, with Professor Mark Jarrell (UC) and Dr. Thomas Maier (ORNL), that they have found clear evidence that the pairing is mediated by an S = 1 particle-hole fluctuation

Hydrodynamic View of Wave-Packet Interference: Quantum Caves

Wave-packet interference is investigated within the complex quantum Hamilton-Jacobi formalism using a hydrodynamic description. Quantum interference leads to the formation of the topological structure of quantum caves in space-time Argand plots. These caves consist of the vortical and stagnation tubes originating from the isosurfaces of the amplitude of the wave function and its first derivative. Complex quantum trajectories display counterclockwise helical wrapping around the stagnation tubes and hyperbolic deflection near the vortical tubes. The string of alternating stagnation and vortical tubes is sufficient to generate divergent trajectories. Moreover, the average wrapping time for trajectories and the rotational rate of the nodal line in the complex plane can be used to define the lifetime for interference features.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures (major revisions with respect to the previous version have been carried out

Quantum phases of atomic boson-fermion mixtures in optical lattices

The zero-temperature phase diagram of a binary mixture of bosonic and fermionic atoms in an one-dimensional optical lattice is studied in the framework of the Bose-Fermi-Hubbard model. By exact numerical solution of the associated eigenvalue problems, ground state observables and the response to an external phase twist are evaluated. The stiffnesses under phase variations provide measures for the boson superfluid fraction and the fermionic Drude weight. Several distinct quantum phases are identified as function of the strength of the repulsive boson-boson and the boson-fermion interaction. Besides the bosonic Mott-insulator phase, two other insulating phases are found, where both the bosonic superfluid fraction and the fermionic Drude weight vanish simultaneously. One of these double-insulator phases exhibits a crystalline diagonal long-range order, while the other is characterized by spatial separation of the two species.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, using REVTEX

Condensation energy in strongly coupled superconductors

We consider the condensation energy in superconductors where the pairing is electronic in origin and is mediated by a collective bosonic mode. We use magnetically-mediated superconductivity as an example, and show that for large spin-fermion couplings, the physics is qualitatively different from the BCS theory as the condensation energy results from the feedback on spin excitations, while the electronic contribution to the condensation energy is positive due to an ``undressing'' feedback on the fermions. The same feedback effect accounts for the gain of the kinetic energy at strong couplings.Comment: 4 pages, revtex 4, 3 eps figure

First order superconducting transition near a ferromagnetic quantum critical point

We address the issue of how triplet superconductivity emerges in an electronic system near a ferromagnetic quantum critical point (FQCP). Previous studies found that the superconducting transition is of second order, and Tc is strongly reduced near the FQCP due to pair-breaking effects from thermal spin fluctuations. In contrast, we demonstrate that near the FQCP, the system avoids pair-breaking effects by undergoing a first order transition at a much larger Tc. A second order superconducting transition emerges only at some distance from the FQCP.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Material-specific gap function in the high-temperature superconductors

We present theoretical arguments and experimental support for the idea that high-Tc superconductivity can occur with s-wave, d-wave, or mixed-wave pairing in the context of a magnetic mechanism. The size and shape of the gap is different for different materials. The theoretical arguments are based on the t-J model as derived from the Hubbard model so that it necessarily includes three-site terms. We argue that this should be the basic minimal model for high-Tc systems. We analyze this model starting with the dilute limit which can be solved exactly, passing then to the Cooper problem which is numerically tractable, then ending with a mean field approach. It is found that the relative stability of s-wave and d-wave depends on the size and the shape of the Fermi surface. We identify three striking trends. First, materials with large next-nearest-neighbor hopping (such as YBa(2)Cu(3)O(7-x)) are nearly pure d-wave, whereas nearest-neighbor materials (such as La(2-x)Sr(x)CuO(4)) tend to be more s-wave-like. Second, low hole doping materials tend to be pure d-wave, but high hole doping leads to s-wave. Finally, the optimum hole doping level increases as the next-nearest-neighbor hopping increases. We examine the experimental evidence and find support for this idea that gap function in the high-temperature superconductors is material-specific.Comment: 20 pages; requires revtex.sty v3.0, epsf.sty; includes 6 EPS figures; Postscript version also available at http://lifshitz.physics.wisc.edu/www/koltenbah/papers/gapfunc2.ps . This version contains an extensive amount of new work including theoretical background, an additional mean field treatment with new figures, and a more thorough experimental surve

Phase diagram of UPt3_3 in the E1gE_{1g} model

The phase diagram of the unconventional superconductor UPt$_3$ is explained under the long-standing hypothesis that the pair wavefunction belongs to the $E_{1g}$ representation of the point group. The main objection to this theory has been that it disagrees with the experimental phase diagram when a field is applied along the c-axis. By a careful analysis of the free energy this objection is shown to be incorrect. This singlet theory also explains the unusual anisotropy in the upper critical field curves, often thought to indicate a triplet pair function.Comment: 11 pages, Revtex, 2 figures (uuencoded, gzip'ed Postscript