Douglas J. Scalapino

As a theoretical condensed matter physicist, I study the physical properties of materials and have been interested in collective phenomena such as superconductivity, magnetism, and metal-insulator transitions. During the past ten years, we have been interested particularly in understanding the properties of the high-temperature cuprate superconductors. These materials can exhibit a variety of phases ranging from an insulating antiferromagnetic phase to a metallic superconducting phase. We have developed numerical simulation techniques as well as analytic methods for investigating the basic mechanisms which underlie the unusual normal and superconducting properties observed in these materials. From this work, we find evidence that strong, short-range antiferromagnetic correlations can lead to a superconducting state in which the orbital symmetry of the electron pairs is dx2-y2 rather than the usual s-wave pairing which occurs in the traditional low-temperature metallic superconductors.