Welcome to Abteilung Metzner

Electronic properties of solids are analyzed and computed in our theory department with a main emphasis on systems where electronic correlations play a crucial role, such as cuprates, manganites and other transition metal oxides. Besides symmetry breaking phase transitions leading to magnetism, orbital and charge order, or superconductivity, correlations can also cause electron localization and many other striking many-body effects not described by the generally very successful independent electron approximation. Our present research focusses in particular on high temperature superconductors with their complex interplay of magnetic, superconducting and charge correlations, and also on manganites and vanadates, whose electronic properties are determined by the interplay of orbital, spin and charge degrees of freedom. Another topic is the influence of lattice degrees of freedom on electronic properties, via Jahn-Teller distortion and electron-phonon interaction. Besides bulk properties of one-, two- and three-dimensional systems also problems with a mesoscopic length scale are studied. In particular, a recent research project deals with inhomogeneous quantum wires. The correlation problem is attacked with various numerical and field-theoretical techniques: exact diagonalization, density matrix renormalization group (DMRG), dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT), functional renormalization group and (1/N)-expansion. Modern many-body methods are not only being applied, but also further developed within our group.