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A central paradigm for classifying the phases of correlated electron systems is their symmetry. Having the ability to controllably tune symmetry-related properties of the system is therefore a powerful probe. In this thesis experiments on quasi-two-dimensional metals Sr₃Ru₂O₇ and Sr₂RuO₄ are reported, where uni-axial strain was used as a means of lifting the native tetragonal symmetry. Uni-axial strain was applied to the samples using a piezo-electric based device which can apply both positive and negative strains to the sample, to study the symmetry of the response about zero strain. Sr₃Ru₂O₇ exhibits a magnetic-field-tuned quantum critical point, in the vicinity of which a novel phase is stabilized. The transport properties of the phase were previously shown to be highly susceptible to in-plane magnetic fields. We show that resistivity inside the phase responds strongly to strain applied along one of the in-plane crystal axes, with the responses parallel and perpendicular to that of the applied strain mirroring each other about zero strain. Our results suggest that the underlying symmetry of the phase is C₄ rather than C₂ symmetric. Sr₂RuO₄ is an unconventional superconductor which was predicted to have an order parameter of the form pₓ ± ip[sub]y. This should result in a splitting of the transitions of the two components as a function of strain, with a cusp in T[sub]c versus strain at zero strain, where T[sub]c is the upper of the two transitions. We find that the response of T[sub]c to strain along [100] is large and symmetric about zero strain, whilst the response to [110] strain is weak and mostly anti-symmetric. No cusp is observed for either strain direction. We argue that although our results are in contradiction with the simplest pₓ ± ip[sub]y models, they may still be consistent with certain scenarios where the cusp would have been too small to be observed.

A detailed experimental study has been made of the spin-splitting factors ℊc for magnetic Landau levels associated with conduction electrons in extremal orbits on the Fermi surface of lead. This information has been derived from the waveform of the de Haas-van Alphen (dHvA) quantum oscillations in the magnetization of single-crystal lead spheres at temperatures of about 1.2 K and with applied magnetic fields in the range 50-75 kG. A commercial spectrum analyzer has been used to provide on-line values of the harmonic amplitudes in the dHvA waveform, and the values of ℊc have been extracted from the relative strengths of the harmonics. Serious systematic errors in ℊc can arise on account of waveform distortions caused by the small and subtle difference between the externally applied field H and the magnetizing field B acting on the conduction electrons. In 1981 Gold and Van Schyndel demonstrated that these 'magnetic-interaction' distortions could be suppressed to a large extent by using negative magnetic feedback to make the induction B within the sample be the same as H (or very nearly so). This thesis describes the first in-depth application of the magnetic-feedback technique to the systematic study of any metal. Particular attention has been paid to the effect of sample inhomogeneity, and Shoenberg's treatment of the magnetic interaction in a non-uniform sample has been generalized to include magnetic feedback. This theory accounts well for many features in the experimental data, especially those which remained a puzzle in the earlier work of Gold and Van Schyndel. Experimental ℊc values are given for the first time for most of the extremal orbits on the lead Fermi surface and for high-symmetry directions of the magnetic field. Indeed these are the most detailed data reported for any polyvalent metal. The ℊc factors for the different orbits and field directions are found to span the range from 0.56 to 1.147. These large net deviations from the free-electron value ℊ₀ = 2.0023 are consequences of the strong spin-orbit and electron-phonon interactions, and an attempt has been made to separate these two contributions to the ℊ-shifts. / Science, Faculty of / Physics and Astronomy, Department of / Graduate

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Department of Physics, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

In this thesis we discuss quantum Hall effects in bilayer graphene and other novel two-dimensional electron systems, focusing on the interplay between nontrivial Fermi surface topology and electron-electron interactions. In the first chapter I will give a brief introduction to some aspects of the quantum Hall effects. The second chapter discusses the physics in bilayer graphene in the absence of external magnetic fields. The first half discusses the band gap opening and trigonal warping effects in its bandstructure, and the second half focuses on the insulating ground state that results from electron-electron interactions. The third chapter discusses the single-particle Landau level structure in bilayer graphene. We will see that when both the band gap and trigonal warping effects are present, the highest Landau level in the valence band is three-fold degenerate at small magnetic fields. As the field increases, the three fold degeneracy is lifted and the Landau level structure gradually reduces to that in the absence of trigonal warping effects. At the end of the chapter we will demonstrate a formalism to map the momentum distribution of the single-particle Landau level structure. Such a mapping will give valuable information about the single-particle bandstructure. The fourth chapter deals with electron-electron interactions in the integer quantum Hall regime, where there is no fractional filling of the orbital degrees of freedom. In such a regime, the effect of electron-electron interactions often leads to spontaneous ordering of the internal degrees of freedom, such as spin, layer and valley. The first part of the chapter will establish the general formalism of Hartree-Fock theory in the quantum Hall regime, and then a specific theory for gapped bilayer graphene with trigonal warping effects is constructed. The resulting ground states are analyzed in the last part of the chapter. / text

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2008. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references and index.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Physics / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

We demonstrate a renormalisation group improved formulation of QCD perturbation theory. At next-to-leading order (NLO) and beyond this permits a direct extraction of the QCD dimensional transmutation parameter, A(_ms) that typifies the one parameter freedom of the theory in the limit of massless quarks. We apply this to a variety of experimental data on e(^+)e" jet observables at NLO. We take into consideration data from PETRA, PEP, TRISTAN, SLC and LEP 1 and 2. In this procedure there is no need to mention, let alone to arbitrarily vary, the unphysical renormalization scale µ, and one avoids the spurious and meaningless "theoretical error" associated with standard a(_8) determinations. An attempt is made to estimate the importance of uncalculated next-to-NLO and higher order perturbative corrections, and power corrections, by studying the scatter in the values of ∆(_MS) obtained for different observables. We also consider large infrared logarithm resummations in these jet observables and present results for the particular cases of the four-jet rate to a next-to-leading logarithm approximation and the distributions for the four-jet variables, "light hemisphere mass" and "narrow jet broadening" to a next-to-next-to-leading logarithm approximation in the perturbative expansion. We apply a simple power correction to these variables and obtain remarkably good fits to the data.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

In this thesis we study the effect of electron-electron interactions on Chiral two-dimensional electron gas (C2DEGs). C2DEGs are a very good description of the low-energy electronic properties of single layer and multilayer graphene systems. The low-energy properties of single layer and multilayer graphene are described by Chiral Hamiltoninans whose band eigenstates have definite chirality. In this thesis we focus on the effect of electron-electron interactions on two of these systems: monolayer and bilayer graphene. In the first half of this thesis we use the massless Dirac Fermion model and random-phase-approximation to study the effect of interactions in graphene sheets. The interplay of graphene's single particle chiral eigenstates along with electron-electron interactions lead to a peculiar supression of spin susceptibility and compressibility, and also to an unusual velocity renormalization. We also report on a theoretical study of the influence of electron-electron interactions on ARPES spectra in graphene. We find that level repulsion between quasiparticle and plasmaron resonances gives rise to a gap-like feature near the Dirac point. In the second half we anticipate interaction driven integer quantum Hall effects in bilayer graphene because of the near-degeneracy of the eight Landau levels which appear near the neutral system Fermi level. We predict that an intra-Landau-level cyclotron resonance signal will appear at some odd-integer filling factors, accompanied by collective modes which are nearly gapless and have approximate q[superscrit 3/2] dispersion. We speculate on the possibility of unusual localization physics associated with these modes. / text