9712391 Marston This young theorist is making a transition from an NYI award to the regular program. He is proposing work on a variety of aspects of the strongly correlated electron problem. In theme, the chosen topics involve the role of quantum coherence in a quantum many body problem. For example, during the scattering of an atom from a surface, charge transfer takes place by tunneling, leading to a distribution of charge species in the final product. The PI has successfully treated the interplay between the loss of coherence and the strong Coulomb repulsion using a 1/N expansion (N is the degeneracy of electrons in surface states), finding good agreement with the experiments. He is planning an extension to higher orders, to improve the understanding of experiments. Other topics in this project include coherence and enlarged symmetries in quantum nanostructures, exact solutions of plateau problem in integer quantum Hall effect and bosonization approaches to the strongly correlated electron problem in 2 dimensions. %%% This young PI has been supported to work on two different problems. As an NYI, he has been studying the many body problem of strongly interacting electrons, including the properties under strong magnetic fields. In a separate grant, he has been studying the many body aspects of the production of ions in an atom-surface collision. In this new grant, which combines his diverse research program in a single grant, he is proposing to begin study in some new areas such as quantum dots. ***
