Stripes and Related Phenomena

This book is a collection of papers in the field of stripes and high Tc superconductivity. The most relevant theoretical and experimental contributions from experts in the field of stripes, presented at the 'Second International Conference on Stripes and High Tc Superconductivity', are selected for publication. The book includes contributions on other stripe phases observed in manganites, nikelates, spin ladders, and heterostructures. Since a large stream of research in a growing community is converging towards the stripe scenario, this book serves as an important reference in the field of striped phases and high Tc superconductivity. The problem of high Tc superconductors has been a central issue in solid-state physics since 1987. After the discovery of high Tc superconductivity (HTSC) in doped perovskites, it was realized that HTSC appears in an unknown complex electronic phase of condensed matter. In the early years, all theories of HTSC were focused on the physics of a homogeneous 2D metal with large electron--electron correlations or on a 2D polaron gas.