Studies of Complex Systems in Condensed Matter Physics and Economics

Title of dissertation: STUDIES OF COMPLEX SYSTEMS IN CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS AND ECONOMICS Anand Banerjee, Doctor of Philosophy, 2008 Dissertation directed by: Professor Victor M. Yakovenko Department of Physics This dissertation reports the study of complex systems from two very different fields. The dissertation is divided into two parts. The first part involves study of angular magnetoresistance in quasi-one-dimensional organic conductors and graphene bilayers (chapter 2 and 3). The second part is devoted to the modeling and empirical study of personal income distribution (chapter 4 and 5). First, we study the effect of crystal superstructures, produced by orientational ordering of the ReO4 and ClO4 anions in the quasi-one-dimensional organic conductors (TMTSF)2ReO4 and (TMTSF)2ClO4, on the angular magnetoresistance oscillations (AMRO) observed in these materials. Folding of the Brillouin zone due to anion ordering generates effective tunneling amplitudes between distant chains. These amplitudes cause multiple peaks in interlayer conductivity for the magnetic field orientations along the rational crystallographic directions (the Lebed magic angles). Different wave vectors of the anion ordering in (TMTSF)2ReO4 and (TMTSF)2ClO4 result in the odd and even Lebed angles, as observed experimentally. When a strong magnetic field is applied parallel to the layers and perpendicular the chains and exceeds a certain threshold, the interlayer tunneling between different branches of the folded electron spectrum becomes possible, and interlayer conductivity should increase sharply. This effect can be utilized to probe the anion ordering gaps in (TMTSF)2ClO4 and (TMTSF)2ReO4. An application of this effect to κ-(ET)2Cu(NCS)2 is also briefly discussed. Next, we study AMRO in graphene bilayers. We calculate the interlayer conductivity and investigate the effects of a parallel magnetic field on the low energy bands of graphene bilayer. Next, we analyze the data on personal income distribution from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. We compare fits of the data to the exponential, log-normal, and gamma distributions. The exponential function gives a good (albeit not perfect) description of 98% of the population in the lower part of the distribution. The log-normal and gamma functions do not improve the fit significantly, despite having more parameters, and mimic the exponential function. We find that the probability density at zero income is not zero, which contradicts the log-normal and gamma distributions, but is consistent with the exponential one. The highresolution histogram of the probability density shows a very sharp and narrow peak at low incomes, which we interpret as the result of a government policy on income redistribution. We also analyze data on individual income from Internal Revenue Service and University of Maryland. Finally, we discuss a model which captures the two-class structure of income distribution in the USA. STUDIES OF COMPLEX SYSTEMS IN CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS AND ECONOMICS