Publications

Articles

My Google Scholar profiles provides a complete record of all my observable publications. Some journal versions are available from my ReserachGate profile, and preprint versions — from arXiv.org.

Books

Drawing from the broad spectrum of phenomena, described in more than 100,000 articles on high-Tc superconductivity, in this book published by World Scientific (includes 34 figures, more than 700 equations, and 543 references), we analyze those basic properties for which understanding can be achieved within the framework of traditional methods of theoretical physics.This is the case of the overdoped cuprates for which the “Bardeen program” has been realized: We know their electronic spectrum, we can calculate their basic thermodynamic and electrodynamic properties, and predict new phenomena. The book gives a pedagogical derivation of formulas describing the electron band structure, penetration depth, specific heat, fluctuation conductivity, etc. Prediction of plasmons and their application for a new type of THz generators is considered as well.The book advocates that the strongest exchange interaction in condensed matter physics — the intraatomic s-d exchange — is the long sought pairing mechanism in overdoped cuprate superconductors.

Thesis

The goal of this thesis is to provide understanding of surface diffusion in InAs lattice mismatched heteroepitaxy on GaAs(001) on the atomic scale. The method we have employed to pursue the problem of In surface diffusion is based on density-functional theory. In considering the InAs/GaAs(001) growth process itself, we focused on the alloying which was experimentally found to occur in the initial stages of the wetting layer formation. Our stability analysis supports the experimentally proposed (2x3) structural model for the InGaAs(001) surface. We also derived a diagram of the wetting layer surface phases. Further analysis concentrated on the effect of strain on indium diffusivity on the bare GaAs(001)-c(4x4) surface. An isotropic compressive strain was found to gives rise to a significant repulsive interaction between a strained island and an adatom diffusing towards the island, which appears to be the dominant effect of strain on the adatom migration. Finally, a simple 1D model problem was employed to demonstrate that strain-limited diffusion can lead to self-limiting growth of strained islands.

Software documentation

E. Penev, TiReX Manual: Replica exchange molecular dynamics using Tinker 4.2 (Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2009)
E. Penev, "MHop: User Guide" (Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Basel, 2005) [sample chapter]
M. Fuchs and E. Penev, Constructing Pseudopotentials with the Program fhi98PP (Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society, Berlin, 2003)
A.L. da Rosa, S.M. Lee, and E. Penev, The FHIMD Toolkit. User's Manual (Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Berlin, 2002)
P. Kratzer, C.G. Morgan, E. Penev, A.L. da Rosa, A. Schindlmayr, L.G. Wang, and T. Zywietz, FHI98MD: Computer code for density-functional theory calculations for poly-atomic systems. User's Manual (Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Berlin, 1999)