Physical Society Colloquium
Interview for Faculty Position
Dynamical Electronic Excitations in Real Materials:
Perspective of First-Principles Many-Body Theories
Wei Ku
University of California at Davis
Theoretical investigation of dynamical electronic excitations in real
materials, which are directly related to practical applications of the
materials and most modern experimental measurements, has notably progressed
in the past decade, owing to both the continuous heoretical development and
the escalating computation power. In particular, serious progress has been
made based on various "first-principles" approaches, in which the undamental
interaction (electronic Coulomb interaction) is well understood, and rich
behavior of condensed matter is controlled by the chemical environment and
the intrinsic quantum many-body interaction. In this talk, a short
introduction and a global perspective on various first-principles approaches
and their practical applications/limitations will be discussed, accompanied
with examples of recent nvestigations on optical/electronic excitations and
magnetic order in important materials of various classes, including
collective charge fluctuations in newly discovered superconductor
MgB2, surprising novel understanding of quasi-particle excitation
of prototype semiconductors Si and Ge, and origin of the exceptional
ferromagnetism of nsulating
La4Ba2Cu2O10. Current (and
promising future) directions of theoretical developments will also be
addressed, targeting theoretical challenges in properly treating systems with
stronger quantum correlation.
Thursday, February 13th 2003, 16:00
Ernest Rutherford Physics Building, R.E. Bell Conference Room (room 103)
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