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Physical Society Colloquium
C. Kallin McMaster University Cuprates exhibit a variety of phases, including antiferromagnetism and superconductivity. These can be viewed as conventional symmetry-breaking phases, with well-defined order parameters, Goldstone modes, Higgs bosons, and finite temperature phase transitions. The cuprates may also exhibit other, more exotic phases called "quantum ordered phases", which are distinguished by the topological structure of their ground state wave functions. The paradigm for quantum order is the fractional quantum Hall effect. In the cuprates, quantum order arises in the study of spin-charge separation. This talk will discuss the search for spin-charge separation in the cuprates, which began with Anderson's RVB conjecture and which is now described in terms of Z2 gauge theories in which the quasiparticles are spinons, chargons, and visons.
Friday, November 15th 2002, 15:30 |