Historians of education for University history: themes and research directions

Stabilization of sliding ferroelectricity through exciton condensation

Sliding ferroelectricity is a phenomenon that arises from the insurgence of spontaneous electronic polarization perpendicular to the layers of two-dimensional systems upon the relative sliding of the atomic layer constituents. Because of the weak van der Waals interactions between layers, sliding and the associated symmetry breaking can occur at low energy cost in materials such as transition-metal dichalcogenides. Here we discuss theoretically the origin and quantitative understanding of the...

First-principles theory of correlated transport through nanojunctions

We report the inclusion of electron-electron correlation in the calculation of transport properties within an ab initio scheme. A key step is the reformulation of Landauer's approach in terms of an effective transmittance for the interacting electron system. We apply this framework to analyze the effect of short-range interactions on Pt atomic wires and discuss the coherent and incoherent correction to the mean-field approach. © 2005 The American Physical Society.

Imaging quasiparticle wave functions in quantum dots via tunneling spectroscopy

We show that in quantum dots the physical quantities probed by local tunneling spectroscopies-namely, the quasiparticle wave functions of interacting electrons-can considerably deviate from their single-particle counterparts as an effect of Coulomb correlation. From the exact solution of the few-particle Hamiltonian for prototype dots, we find that such deviations are crucial to predict wave function images at low electron densities or high magnetic fields. © 2005 The American Physical Society.