We discuss the orbital part of the magnetic susceptibility ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\chi}}}_{\mathit{d}}$ of the doped Mott insulator in two dimensions. Starting from the U(1) gauge theory, we obtain corrections to ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\chi}}}_{\mathit{d}}$ due to gauge-field fluctuations. We find that these fluctuations reduce the Bose contribution to the susceptibility, implying that the Bose-condensation temperature is strongly suppressed by gauge interactions. The temperature dependence of ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\chi}}}_{\mathit{d}}$ is obtained by a numerical simulation of a lattice Bose gas interacting with a random magnetic field, and found to be consistent with recent data on high-
Tc oxides.
We study the low-temperature thermodynamics of a spin-
S magnetic impurity coupled to
m> 2 degenerate bands of interacting electrons in one dimension. By exploiting boundary-conformal-field-theory techniques, we derive exact results for the possible impurity thermal and magnetic response. The leading behavior of the impurity magnetic susceptibility is shown to be insensitive to the electron-electron interaction. In contrast, there are two types of scaling behavior of the impurity specific heat consistent with the symmetries of the problem: Either it remains the same as for the ordinary multichannel Kondo problem for noninteracting electrons or it acquires a new leading term governed by a critical exponent ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{m}{=(g}_{m}^{\ensuremath{-}1}\ensuremath{-}1)/m,$ where
gm< 1 is a generalized (
m channel) Luttinger-liquid charge parameter measuring the strength of the repulsive electron-electron interaction. We conjecture that the latter behavior is indeed realized when the impurity is exactly screened
(m=2S).