9604493 Louie This award provides funds to permit Drs. Steven G. Louie and Marvin L. Cohen, Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, to pursue with Dr. Kee Joo Chang, Department of Physics, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), and Dr. Jisoon Ihm, Center for Theoretical Physics, Seoul National University, for 24 months, a program of cooperative research on the dielectric response function and its applications to solid systems. Applications will be made to investigate optical properties, quasiparticle excitations energies, electron-electron repulsive interactions in superconductors, and dielectric screening of large systems. Recent theoretical advances, going beyond the standard momentum space formalism, have allowed the efficient first-principles calculation of the dielectric matrix and the electronic structure of solids. The significance of the proposed research is to provide deeper insight into the understanding of electron- electron interactions in solids, in particular, those manifested in exchange-correlation effects and local-field screening. The collaborators are recognized experts in the field of this research. Their collaboration, which will include their graduate students, is intended to provide an intellectual bridge between the U.S. and Korea in this field of science. This project is relevant to the objectives of the U.S.-Korea Cooperative Science Program which seeks to increase the level of cooperation between U.S. and Korean scientists and engineers through the exchange of scientific information, ideas, skills, and techniques and through collaboration on problems of mutual benefit. This project provides an international research experience for a U.S. graduate student. Korean participation is supported by the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation (KOSEF). ***
