This award supports research on new approaches to strongly interacting many-body quantum systems with the aim of elucidating the electronic properties of materials such as the high temperature superconductors, related perovskite ruthenates and nickelates, Bechgaard salts, and other organic superconductors. The PI intends to continue a coordinated study of the properties of doped Mott insulators. Specifically it is intended to investigate the properties of conducting stripe ordered, stripe liquid, and stripe liquid crystalline phases, the mechanism of high temperature superconductivity in these phases, an most ambitiously, to study the consequences of topological doping for the anomalous normal state of "bad metals." The PI plans an approach that includes controlled approximate solutions of microscopic models as well as developing more phenomenological theory with the aim of understanding the implications of experimental observations. Specific plans include: (1) studies of solvable electronic models which exhibit stripe phases, (2) an investigation of the consequences of fluctuations of the phase of the order parameter on the properties of superconductors with low superfluid densities, (3) studies to establish the conditions for the stability of possible liquid crystalline and isotropic liquid stripe phases, and to elucidate the electronic properties of these phases. %%% This proposal involves new approaches to the study of electronic properties of materials with strongly interacting electrons; a challenging problem at the forefront of condensed matter theory. The role of `striped phases' and superconducting fluctuations in high temperature superconductors are a focus of this work. ***
