In many areas of physics, such as astrophysics, solid-state physics, nuclear physics and particle physics, a major outstanding problem is a better understanding of corre lation phenomena. While in most cases the average properties of a system are rather well understood, the correlations and the resulting clustering are poorly understood. They are reflections of the force mediating the interaction among the constituents and play essential roles in determining the structure of a physical system. At the largest scales, in astrophysics, it has recently been realized that there are huge voids in...

The field of low-dimensional conductors has been very active for more than twenty years. It has grown continuously and both the inorganic and organic materials have remark able properties, such as charge and spin density waves and superconductivity. The discovery of superconductivity at high temperature in copper-based quasi two-dimensional conducting oxides nearly ten years ago has further enlarged the field and stimulated new research on inorganic conductors. It was obviously impossible to cover such a broad field in a ten day Institute and it seemed pertinent to concentrate on inorganic...

This meeting on Hadron Spectroscopy and the Confinement Problem took place from June 27 to July 8, 1995. The first four days were at Queen Mary and Westfield College, London and the last six at the University College of Swansea, Wales. The reason for the split sites was a question of accomodating the 54 students and 12 lecturers. However, it was enjoyed by all concerned, providing the opportunity to sample the nightlife of London one week and enjoy the delightful coastal area around Swansea the following week. The meeting immediately preceded the Hadron '95 conference in Manchester. The...

Engineering materials with desirable physical and technological properties requires understanding and predictive capability of materials behavior under varying external conditions, such as temperature and pressure. This immediately brings one face to face with the fundamental difficulty of establishing a connection between materials behavior at a microscopic level, where understanding is to be sought, and macroscopic behavior which needs to be predicted. Bridging the corresponding gap in length scales that separates the ends of this spectrum has been a goal intensely pursued by theoretical...

This volume contains the lectures and seminars presented at the NATO Ad- vanced Study Institute on "Solid State Lasers: New Developments and Appli- cations" the fifteenth course of the Europhysics School of Quantum Electronics, held under the supervision of the Quantum Electronics Division of the European Physical Society. The Institute was held at Elba International Physics Center, Marciana Marina, Elba Island, Tuscany, Italy, August 31 -September 11, 1992. The Europhysics School of Quantum Electronics was started in 1970 with the aim of providing instruction for young researchers and...

The motion of a particle in a random potential in two or more dimensions is chaotic, and the trajectories in deterministically chaotic systems are effectively random. It is therefore no surprise that there are links between the quantum properties of disordered systems and those of simple chaotic systems. The question is, how deep do the connec- tions go? And to what extent do the mathematical techniques designed to understand one problem lead to new insights into the other? The canonical problem in the theory of disordered mesoscopic systems is that of a particle moving in a random array of...

The Advanced Study Institute on Phase Transitions in Surface Films was held at the Ettore Majorana Centre for Scientific Cul ture in Erice, Sicily, during June 11 to June 25, 1979. This Institute was the second course of the International School of Low Temperature Physics which was established at the Centre in 1977, with the guidance and inspiration of T. Regge and A. Zichichi. The 1979 course selected a topic on one of the most rapidly advancing fields of condensed matter physics in the late 70's. The program of topics and speakers was developed with the advice of the Organizing Committee,...

The optical properties of semiconductors have played an important role since the identification of semiconductors as "small" bandgap materials in the thinies, due both to their fundamental interest as a class of solids baving specific optical propenies and to their many important applications. On the former aspect we can cite the fundamental edge absorption and its assignment to direct or indirect transitions, many-body effects as revealed by exciton formation and photoconductivity. On the latter aspect, large-scale applications sucb as LEDs and lasers, photovoltaic converters,...

Ladies and Gentlemen, dear colleagues, Welcome in Bodrum to the NASion Hot and Dense Nuclear Matter Welcome also to Mrs. Governor Dr. Lale AYTAMAN. We are very honored, that you, Governor of the Mugla-State, came here to greet us. We are particularly grateful to you that you offered help and assured us to do everything that we can enjoy two safe weeks in Bodrum, in this wonderful area of your country. I have chosen Bodrum as the place for our NASI because I like this historic region where many cultures meet (e. g., Oriental and European (Greek, Roman) culture) and where you find numerous...

This volume provides a record of the second ASI on the subject "Chemical Physics of Intercalation," which was patterned after its highly successful July 1987 predecessor. A growing community of chemists, physicists and materials scientists has come to appreciate the utility of extending the intercalation concept to generic guest-host compounds and solid solutions. The unifying themes are the complex phase equilibria which result from the competition between repulsive and attractive interactions between and within the guest and host substructures, the tunability of properties by control of...