Insulators are protein-bound DNA elements that are thought to play a role in chromatin organization and the regulation of gene expression by mediating intra- and interchromosomal interactions. Suppressor of Hair-wing [Su(Hw)] and Drosophila CTCF (dCTCF) insulators are found at distinct loci throughout the Drosophila melanogaster genome and function by recruiting an additional protein, Centrosom...

Much progress has been made recently in the study of the effects of electron-phonon (el-ph) coupling in doped insulators using angle resolved photoemission (ARPES), yielding evidence for the dominant role of el-ph interactions in underdoped cuprates. As these studies have been limited to doped Mott insulators, the important question arises how this compares with doped band insulators where simi...

The band theory of electrons predicts that any crystal with an odd number of electrons per unit cell must be a metal. However, strong electron-electron interactions can invalidate this conclusion, and such crystals can also be insulators, known as Mott insulators. I will use this term here more broadly: often the Mott insulator has a secondary instability to spin or charge ordering which increa...

Chromatin insulators of higher eukaryotes functionally divide the genome into active and inactive domains. Furthermore, insulators regulate enhancer/promoter communication, which is evident from the Drosophila bithorax locus in which a multitude of regulatory elements control segment specific gene activity. Centrosomal protein 190 (CP190) is targeted to insulators by CTCF or other insulator DNA...

We introduce the concept that there are two generic classes of Mott insu-lators in nature. They are distinguished by their responses to weak doping. Doped charges form cluster (i.e. distribute inhomogeneously) in type I Mott insulators while distribute homogeneously in type II Mott insulators. We present our opinion on the role inhomogeneity plays in the cuprates.

We present a theoretical study of electronic states in topological insulators with impurities. Chiral edge states in 2d topological insulators and helical surface states in 3d topological insulators show a robust transport against nonmagnetic impurities. Such a nontrivial character inspired physicists to come up with applications such as spintronic devices [1], thermoelectric materials [2], pho...

Wu-Jun Shi,1,2 Junwei Liu,3 Yong Xu,1,4,5,* Shi-Jie Xiong,2 Jian Wu,1,4 and Wenhui Duan1,4,† 1State Key Laboratory of Low-Dimensional Quantum Physics, and Department of Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, People’s Republic of China 2National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, and Department of Physics, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, People’s Republic of China 3Department ...

The ground-state phase diagrams of the Falicov-Kimball model with local disorder are derived within the dynamical mean-field theory and using the geometrically averaged s“typical”d local density of states. Correlated metal, Mott insulator, and Anderson insulator phases are identified. The metal-insulator transitions are found to be continuous. The interaction and disorder compete with each othe...