Syllabus: Solar Energy Systems and Building Design

This course introduces the fundamental concepts of solar building design and energy systems. Through project based study and possible field visits, students will explore the theory, technologies, applications, and benefits of solar design of buildings and discover how to utilize solar energy systems for residential and commercial buildings. Students will be required to research and document technology and complete a semester case study project in which they will examine various energy conservation aspects and economics underlying solar energy systems

On the origin of the hump structure in the in-plane optical conductivity of high Tc cuprates based on a SU(2) slave-boson theory

An improved version of SU(2) slave-boson approach is applied to study the in-plane optical conductivity of the two dimensional systems of high Tc cuprates. We investigate the role of fluctuations of both the phase and amplitude of order parameters on the (Drude) peak-dip-hump structure in the in-plane conductivity as a function of hole doping concentration and temperature. The mid-infrared(MIR) hump in the in-plane optical conductivity is shown to originate from the antiferromagnetic spin fluctuations of short range(the amplitude fluctuations of spin singlet pairing order parameters), which is consistent with our previous U(1) study. However the inclusion of both the phase and amplitude fluctuations is shown to substantially improve the qualitative feature of the optical conductivity by showing substantially reduced Drude peak widths for entire doping range. Both the shift of the hump position to lower frequency and the growth of the hump peak height with increasing hole concentration is shown to be consistent with observations.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure