News
March 8, 2002: A new paper entitled "Ab Initio Evidence for Impurity d3z2-r2 Hole Formation in Doped La2-xSrxCuO4" has been published in Physical Review B. This paper follows up on a recent publication in that journal in which we showed the modern Becke-3-LYP functional provides an excellent description of the undoped antiferromagnetic state of La2CuO4. With this same density functional, the new work estabilishes that z2 holes are formed upon doping. They are found to be localized in the vicinity of the Sr impurity, inducing local distortions. This finding is consistent with previous work from First Principles Research which has proposed a new theory of superconductivity in the cuprates as arising from a crossing of Cu x2-y2 and z2 bands. The theory has already been shown to be consistent with numerous experiments, including the NMR, ARPES, and Josephson tunneling. In this new work, we also show it to be consistent with the NQR and XAFS. Copies of these papers can be downloaded from this site (Publications). A short summary is also available (High Tc Summary).
Lectures
Over the past few years, Dr. Jason Perry and Dr. Jamil Tahir-Kheli have given invited seminars at Caltech, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, UC Santa Barbara, and UC Riverside. They have also spoken at ACS meetings in Dallas and Boston, APS meetings in Los Angeles and Atlanta, the Ion Chemistry Conference in Lake Arrowhead, CA, NORM '99 in Portland, and the West Coast Theoretical Chemistry Conference in Richland, WA.