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Highly Correlated Electron Systems
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 November 2013
Extract
The study of materials which have electronic phase transitions is a very active area. Such phase transitions include charge and spin density formation, as well the superconducting condensation in a rapidly expanding variety of materials. It is now common to lump these phenomena under the heading of correlated electron physics, involving as they do the essential role of electron-electron interactions in their occurrence. There are also materials in which there is found no electronic phase transition, but whose properties indicate strong electron-electron effects, such as a number of the so-called heavy fermion compounds. The part of condensed matter theory which addresses the particular physics of such materials is generally known as many-body physics. How to effectively treat strong electronic interactions theoretically is very much an unsolved problem, and theory does not give much more than limited guidance to the experimental research in this area. External magnetic fields have proved to be effective experimental probes of the properties of such systems, and the advent of increasingly strong pulsed fields is opening new possibilities for exposing and pulling apart the underlying electronic ground state of many such materials.
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- Materials Science in High Magnetic Fields
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- Copyright © Materials Research Society 1993
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