Dynamics and transport in strongly interacting disordered materials

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Thomas Nattermann
• Subject Area: Experimental Condensed Matter Physics
• Term: from 2005 to 2009
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 5453534

Materials used in nanophysics and nanotechnology are presumably disordered. Metallic nanowires, thin and ultrathin magnetic and superconducting films, semiconducting tunnel junctions contain plenty of defects: structural and topographic defects in films, impurities, magnetic defects and pinning centers in superconductors. The tendency to reduced dimensionality in these materials leads to enhancement of the interaction between their elementary objects: electrons and holes in wires, Cooper pairs in superconductors, or spin and charge density waves. The elastic self-interaction of domain walls, interfaces and vortices in superconductors grows as well. Theory so far considered either disordered materials with no or weak interaction (the main subject of mesoscopics) or strongly interacting ordered systems (theory of strongly correlated electrons, theory of metal-insulator transition). Few results related to strongly interacting disordered systems are mostly qualitative and phenomenological. The strong interaction and disorder simultaneously are substantial elements of the Coulomb gap theory by Efros and Shklovsky, even though this theory is based on an idea of one-electron transfer and does not consider collective transfer of electrons. This project intends to develop theory of transport and dynamical phenomena in materials with strong interaction and disorder. Three different types of strongly interacting disordered systems (SIDS) will be considered: 1. Thin metallic wires 2. Heterogeneous ferromagnet-superconductor systems. 3. Thin magnetic films with domain walls.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: USA
• Participating Person: Professor Dr. Valery Pokrovsky