Synopses & Reviews
Recent dramatic progress in solid state physics, as highlighted by novel phenomena in semiconductor heterostructures or intercalation compounds and by high Tc superconductivity, is a fascinating outcome of the interaction between the physicists and chemists in various fields working on low-dimensional systems. The strength of the present volume lies in the fact that it gives a survey of the frontier of various classes of low-dimensional systems with articles by leading scientists from the international community. The volume has been conceived as a tribute to Professor H. Kamimura to honour his accomplishments upon his retirement from the University of Tokyo. Reflecting his wide spectrum of interests, the topics covered here range from (i) intercalation compounds and layered materials, (ii) 2D systems and superlattices, (iii) high Tc compounds to (iv) surfaces, mesoscopic systems, quasi-1D systems and point defects, thus ranging from 2D down to 0D, from superconductors to insulators, and from physics to quantum chemistry. The remarkable richness of subjects and approaches treated here will enable the readers to discover intriguing common and distinct key concepts in different classes of systems. This addition to the series Physics and Chemistry of Materials with Low-Dimensional Structures will thus prove to be fundamental to an exploration of the new horizons in condensed-matter physics and chemistry in the 1990s.
Synopsis
In Bird of Passage by Rudolf Peierls, we find a paragraph in which he de- scribes his Cambridge days in the 1930s: On these relativistic field theory] problems my main contacts were Dirac, and the younger theoreticians. These included in particular Nevill (now Sir Nevill) Mott, perhaps the friendliest among many kind and friendly people we met then. Professor Kamimura became associated with Sir Rudolf Peierls in the 1950s, when he translated, with his colleagues, Peierls's 1955 textbook, Quantum Theory of Solids, into Japanese. This edition, to which Sir Rudolf himself contributed a preface, benefitted early generations of Japanese solid state physicists. Later in 1974/5, during a sabbatical year spent at the Cavendish Laboratory, Professor Kamimura met and began a long association with Sir Nevill Mott. In particular, they developed ideas for disordered systems. One of the outcomes is a paper coauthored by them on ESR-induced variable- range hopping in doped semiconductors. A series of works on disordered systems, together with those on two-dimensional systems, have served as building blocks for Physics of Interacting Electrons in Disordered Systems, in the International Series of Monographs on Physics, coauthored by Aoki and published in 1989 by the Oxford University Press. Soon after Professor Kamimura obtained a D. Sc. in 1959 for the work on the ligand field theory under the supervision ofMasao Kotani, his strong con- nections in the international physical community began when he worked at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1961/64.