We report the first experimental observation of a characteristic nonlinear threshold behavior from dc dynamical response as an evidence for a Wigner crystallization in high-purity GaAs 2D hole systems in zero magnetic field. The system under increasing current drive exhibits voltage oscillations with negative differential resistance. They confirm the coexistence of a moving crystal along with striped edge states as observed for electrons on helium surfaces. However, the threshold is well below the typical classical levels due to a different pinning and depinning mechanism that is possibly related to a quantum process.
We report an unusual breakdown of the magnetically induced Wigner solid in an exceptional two-dimensional electron gas. The current-voltage characteristic is found to be hysteretic in the voltage biased setup and has a region of negative differential resistance in the current biased setup. When the sample is current biased in the region of negative differential resistance, the voltage on and the current through the sample develop spontaneous narrow band oscillations.
We report studies of pinning mode resonances in the low total Landau filling (ν) Wigner solid of a series of bilayer hole samples with negligible interlayer tunneling, and with varying interlayer separation d. Comparison of states with equal layer densities (p,p) to single layer states (p,0) produced {in situ} by biasing, indicates that there is interlayer quantum correlation in the solid at small d. Also, the resonance frequency at small d is decreased just near ν=1/2 and 2/3, indicating the importance in the solid of correlations related to those in the fractional quantum Hall effects.
For a series of samples with 2D electron systems in dilute Al_x Ga_{1-x}As, with varying x from 0 to 0.8 %, we survey the pinning mode resonances of Wigner solids at the low Landau filling termination of the fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE) series. For all x studied, the pinning modes are present with frequencies, f_pk, that are consistent with collective weak pinning. For x>=0.22% we find f_pk vs B exhibits a rapid increase that is not present for x=0. We find the observed f_pk is much smaller than values calculated with a simple Wigner solid model which neglects the effects of the disor…
Interactions between the constituents of a condensed matter system can drive it through a plethora of different phases due to many-body effects. A prominent platform for this type of behavior is a two-dimensional electron system in a magnetic field, which evolves intricately through various gaseous, liquid and solids phases governed by Coulomb interaction. Here we report on the experimental observation of a phase transition between the Laughlin liquid of composite fermions and the adjacent insulating phase of a magnetic field-induced Wigner solid. The experiments are performed in the lowest La…
The interplay of strong Coulomb interactions and of topology is currently under intense scrutiny in various condensed matter and atomic systems. One example of this interplay is the phase competition of fractional quantum Hall states and the Wigner solid in the two-dimensional electron gas. Here we report a Wigner solid at $ν=1.79$ and its melting due to fractional correlations occurring at $ν=9/5$. This Wigner solid, that we call the reentrant integer quantum Hall Wigner solid, develops in a range of Landau level filling factors that is related by particle-hole symmetry to the so called reent…
We study a bilayer system hosting exotic many-body states of two-dimensional electron systems (2DESs) in close proximity but isolated from one another by a thin barrier. One 2DES has low electron density and forms a Wigner solid (WS) at high magnetic fields. The other has much higher density and, in the same field exhibits fractional quantum Hall states (FQHSs). The WS manifests microwave resonances which are understood as pinning modes, collective oscillations of the WS within the small but finite ubiquitous disorder. Our measurements reveal a striking evolution of the pinning mode frequencie…
The fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE) states at half integer Landau fillings ($ν$) have long been of great interest, since they have correlations that differ from those of the fundamental Laughlin states found at odd denominators. At $ν=1/2$ the FQHE has been observed in wide or double quantum wells, and is ascribed to the two-component Halperin-Laughlin $Ψ_{331}$ state. $Ψ_{331}$ excitations carry charge $\pm e/4$, like the carriers of $ν=5/2$ states which are of interest in quantum computation. Further, such an excitation (quasiparticle or -hole) of $Ψ_{331}$ has unequal, opposite charge…
What is the fate of the ground state of a two-dimensional electron system (2DES) at very low Landau level filling factors ($ν$) where interaction reigns supreme? An ordered array of electrons, the so-called Wigner crystal, has long been believed to be the answer. It was in fact the search for the elusive Wigner crystal that led to the discovery of an unexpected, incompressible liquid state, namely the fractional quantum Hall state at $ν=1/3$. Understanding the competition between the liquid and solid ground states has since remained an active field of fundamental research. Here we report exper…
We present time-resolved transport measurements of a Wigner solid (WS) on the surface of liquid Helium confined in a micron-scale channel. At rest, the WS is `dressed' by a cloud of quantised capillary waves (ripplons). Under a driving force, we find that repeated WS-ripplon decoupling leads to stick-slip current oscillations, the frequency of which can be tuned by adjusting the temperature, pressing electric field, or electron density. The WS on liquid He is a promising system for the study of polaron-like decoupling dynamics.
Microwave spectroscopy within the Landau filling ($ν$) range of the integer quantum Hall effect (IQHE) has revealed pinning mode resonances signifying Wigner solids (WSs) composed of quasi-particles or -holes. We study pinning modes of WSs in wide quantum wells (WQWs) for $ 0.8\leν\le1.2$, varying the density, $n$, and tilting the sample by angle $θ$ in the magnetic field. Three distinct WS phases are accessed. One phase, S1, is phenomenologically the same as the WS observed in the IQHEs of narrow QWs. The second phase, S2, exists at $ν$ further from $ν=1$ than S1, and requires a sufficiently …
The quantum-classical crossover from the Fermi liquid towards the Wigner solid is numerically revisited, considering small square lattice models where electrons interact via a Coulomb $U/r$ potential. The studies of models without disorder and spin and including disorder and spin show that the electron solid is formed in two stages, giving rise to an intriguing solid-liquid regime at intermediate couplings
We report the observation of a resonance in the microwave spectra of the real diagonal conductivities of a two-dimensional electron system within a range of ~ +- .0.015 $ from filling factor $ν=1/3$. The resonance is remarkably similar to resonances previously observed near integer $ν$, and is interpreted as the collective pinning mode of a disorder-pinned Wigner solid phase of $e/3$-charged carriers .
We investigate low-frequency fluctuations in the transport characteristics of a quasi-1D Wigner solid (WS) moving along a liquid helium substrate in response to a sinusoidal driving voltage. The fluctuations occur between distinct transport modes in which the decoupling of the WS from ripplonic polarons (or 'dimple lattice', DL) formed on the helium surface does, or does not, occur during each ac cycle. We demonstrate that a Gaussian-like distribution in the decoupling threshold force gives rise to this bistability, as the low-frequency switching occurs when the probability of decoupling durin…
We examine the dynamics of driven classical Wigner solids interacting with quenched disorder from charged impurities. For strong disorder, the initial motion is plastic -- in the form of crossing winding channels. For increasing drive, the disordered Wigner glass can reorder to a moving Wigner smectic -- with the electrons moving in non-crossing 1D channels. These different dynamic phases can be related to the conduction noise and I(V) curves. For strong disorder, we show criticality in the voltage onset just above depinning. We also obtain the dynamic phase diagram for driven Wigner solids an…
We study the effect of a tilted magnetic field on the orientation of Wigner crystals by taking account of the width of a quantum well in the $z$-direction. It is found that the cohesive energy of the electronic crystal is always lower for the $[110]$ direction parallel to the in-plane field. In a realistic sample, a domain structure forms in the electronic solid and each domain orients randomly when the magnetic field is normal to the quantum well. As the field is tilted an angle, the electronic crystal favors to align along a preferred direction which is determined by the in-plane magnetic fi…
We study the edge--states excitations of a droplet of quantum Hall liquid embedded in an electron (Wigner) solid. The presence of strong correlations between the liquid and solid sectors in the ground state is shown to be reflected in the density of states $D(E)$, associated with the excitations of the liquid--solid interface. We find that the prominent effect of these correlations is a suppression of $D(E)$ with respect to its value ($D_0(E)$) in the absence of the Wigner solid environment: $D(E) \sim e^{-α|E|}D_0(E)$. The coefficient $α$ (which is shown to vanish for a perfectly regular dist…
We present transport measurements in a quasi-1D system of surface electrons on liquid helium confined in a 101-$μ$m long and 5-$μ$m wide microchannel where an electrostatic potential with periodicity of $1$-$μ$m along the channel is introduced. In particular, we investigate the influence of such a potential on the nonlinear transport of quasi-1D Wigner Solid (WS) by varying the amplitude of the periodic potential in a wide range. At zero and small values of amplitude, quasi-1D WS in microchannel shows expected features such as the Bragg-Cherenkov scattering of ripplons and reentrant melting. A…
Competition between liquid and solid states in two-dimensional electron system is an intriguing problem in condensed matter physics. We have investigated competing Wigner crystal and fractional quantum Hall ( FQH ) liquid phases in atomically thin suspended graphene devices in Corbino geometry. Low temperature magnetoconductance and transconductance measurements along with $IV$ characteristics all indicate strong charge density dependent modulation of electron transport. Our results show unconventional FQH phases which do not fit the standard Jain's series for conventional FQH states, instead …
Detection and characterization of a different type of topological excitations, namely the domain wall (DW) skyrmion, has received increasing attention because the DW is ubiquitous from condensed matter to particle physics and cosmology. Here we present experimental evidence for the DW skyrmion as the ground state stabilized by long-range Coulomb interactions in a quantum Hall ferromagnet. We develop an alternative approach using nonlocal resistance measurements together with a local NMR probe to measure the effect of low-current-induced dynamic nuclear polarization and thus to characterize the…
The quantum-classical crossover from the Fermi liquid towards the Wigner solid is numerically revisited, considering small square lattice models where electrons interact via a Coulomb U/r potential. We review a series of exact numerical results obtained in the presence of weak site disorder for fully polarized electrons (spinless fermions) and when the spin degrees of freedom are included. A novel intermediate regime between the Fermi system of weakly interacting localized particles and the correlated Wigner solid is obtained. A detailed analysis of the non disordered case shows that the inter…
The dynamical response of Coulomb-interacting particles in nano-clusters are analyzed at different temperatures characterizing their solid- and liquid-like behavior. Depending on the trap-symmetry, both the spatial and temporal correlations undergo slow, stretched exponential relaxations at long times, arising from spatially correlated motion in string-like paths. Our results indicate that the distinction between the `solid' and `liquid' is soft: While particles in a `solid' flow producing dynamic heterogeneities, motion in `liquid' yields unusually long tail in the distribution of particle-di…
We develop a Wigner function representation of the quantum transport theory of the conduction band electrons in Rashba effect resonant tunneling structures with a phonon bath. In narrow band gap heterostructures, spin splitting occurs mainly as a result of inversion asymmetry in the spatial dependence of the potential or as a result of external electric field. This "zero magnetic field spin splitting" is due to the Rashba term in the effective mass Hamiltonian. The quantum transport equations are derived using multi-band non-equilibrium Green's function formulation in generalized Kadanoff-Baym…
A recent letter [H. Zhu et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 126803 (2010)] reports the first measurements of a pinned mode in a Wigner solid at the (electronic) nu = 1/3 fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE) filling. The authors suggest that an interpretation of their findings may be found within the interacting composite fermion (ICF) theory. However, to date there is no record reporting crystalline correlations for nu ~ 1/3 obtained from ICF theory, or related theories. We argue that an appropriate interpretation of these findings follows naturally from the rotating-Wigner-molecule approach, which…
A sufficiently large perpendicular magnetic field quenches the kinetic (Fermi) energy of an interacting two-dimensional (2D) system of fermions, making them susceptible to the formation of a Wigner solid (WS) phase in which the charged carriers organize themselves in a periodic array in order to minimize their Coulomb repulsion energy. In low-disorder 2D electron systems confined to modulation-doped GaAs heterostructures, signatures of a magnetic-field-induced WS appear at low temperatures and very small Landau level filling factors ($ν\simeq1/5$). In dilute GaAs 2D \textit{hole} systems, on t…
The two dimensional system of electrons in a high magnetic field offers an opportunity to investigate a phase transition from a quantum liquid into a Wigner solid. Recent experiments have revealed an incipient composite fermion liquid in a parameter range where theory and many experiments had previously suggested the Wigner crystal phase, thus calling into question our current understanding. This Letter shows how very small quantitative corrections (< 1%) in the energy due to the weak interaction between composite fermions can cause a fundamental change in the nature of the ground state, thus …
Melting of quantum Hall Wigner and bubble crystals
International Center for Quantum Materials, Peking University（北京大学量子材料科学中心）；Division of Physics and Applied Physics, Nanyang Technological University（南洋理工大学物理与应用物理系）；Leiden Institute of Physics, Leiden University（莱顿大学莱顿物理研究所）；Department of Electrical Engineering, Princeton University（普林斯顿大学电气工程系）；Department of Physics, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign（伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校物理系）；Materials Research Laboratory, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign（伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校材料研究实验室）；Hefei National Laboratory（合肥国家实验室）；Interdisciplinary Institute of Light-Element Quantum Materials and Research Center for Light-Element Advanced Materials, Peking University（北京大学轻元素量子材料交叉研究院暨轻元素先进材料研究中心）
Electron solid phases of matter are revealed by characteristic vibrational resonances. Sufficiently large magnetic fields can overcome the effects of disorder, leading to a weakly pinned collective mode called the magnetophonon. Consequently, in this regime it is possible to develop a tightly constrained hydrodynamic theory of pinned magnetophonons. The behavior of the magnetophonon resonance across thermal and quantum melting transitions has been experimentally characterized in two-dimensional electron systems. Applying our theory to these transitions we explain several key features of the da…
Motivated by recent experiments, and using the rotating-and-vibrating electron-molecule (RVEM) theory [Yannouleas and Landman, Phys. Rev. B 66, 115315 (2002); Phys. Rev. A 81, 023609 (2010)], in conjunction with exact diagonalization, we develop a unified microscopic approach for the interplay between liquid fractional-quantum-Hall-effect (FQHE) states and Wigner-solid states in the lowest Landau level (LLL) in the neighborhood of nu=1/3. Liquid characteristics of the FQHE states are associated with the symmetry-conserving rotations and vibrations of the electron molecule. Although the electro…
The interplay between the Fermi sea anisotropy, electron-electron interaction, and localization phenomena can give rise to exotic many-body phases. An exciting example is an anisotropic two-dimensional (2D) Wigner solid (WS), where electrons form an ordered array with an anisotropic lattice structure. Such a state has eluded experiments up to now as its realization is extremely demanding: First, a WS entails very low densities where the Coulomb interaction dominates over the kinetic (Fermi) energy. Attaining such low densities while keeping the disorder low is very challenging. Second, the low…
We report studies of pinning mode resonances of magnetic field induced bilayer Wigner crystals of bilayer hole samples with negligible interlayer tunneling and different interlayer separations d, in states with varying layer densities, including unequal layer densities. With unequal layer densities, samples with large d relative to the in-plane carrier-carrier spacing a, two pinning resonances are present, one for each layer. For small d/a samples, a single resonance is observed even with significant density imbalance. These samples, at balance, were shown to exhibit an enhanced pinning mode f…
Electron-electron interactions strongly affect the behavior of low-dimensional systems. In one dimension (1D), arbitrarily weak interactions qualitatively alter the ground state producing a Luttinger liquid (LL) which has now been observed in a number of experimental systems. Interactions are even more important at low carrier density, and in the limit when the long-ranged Coulomb potential is the dominant energy scale, the electron liquid is expected to become a periodically ordered solid known as the Wigner crystal. In 1D, the Wigner crystal has been predicted to exhibit novel spin and magne…
We report thermopower measurements of interacting GaAs bilayer hole systems. When the carrier densities in the two layers are equal, these systems exhibit a reentrant insulating phase near the quantum Hall state at total filling factor $ν=1$. Our data show that as the temperature is decreased, the thermopower diverges in the insulating phase. This behavior indicates the opening of an energy gap at low temperature, consistent with the formation of a pinned Wigner solid. We extract an energy gap and a Wigner solid melting phase diagram.
Motivated by puzzling results of recent experiments, we re-examine the response of a weakly pinned two-dimensional Wigner crystal to a uniform AC electric field. We confirm that at some disorder and magnetic field dependent frequency $ω_p$, an inhomogeneously broadened absorption line emerges. Although the line is conventionally broad in zero magnetic field, in strong fields it appears as a sharp resonance whose width is related to the density of states in the low-frequency tail of the zero-field phonon spectrum. This behavior originates due to the long-range Coulomb interactions.
We show that rotational angles of electrons moving in two dimensions (2D) in a perpendicular magnetic field can be synchronized by an external microwave field which frequency is close to the Larmor frequency. The synchronization eliminates collisions between electrons and thus creates a regime with zero diffusion corresponding to the zero-resistance states observed in experiments with high mobility 2D electron gas (2DEG). For long range Coulomb interactions electrons form a rotating hexagonal Wigner crystal. Possible relevance of this effect for planetary rings is discussed.
When a strong magnetic field is applied perpendicularly (along z) to a sheet confining electrons to two dimensions (x-y), highly correlated states emerge as a result of the interplay between electron-electron interactions, confinement and disorder. These so-called fractional quantum Hall (FQH) liquids form a series of states which ultimately give way to a periodic electron solid that crystallizes at high magnetic fields. This quantum phase of electrons has been identified previously as a disorder-pinned two-dimensional Wigner crystal with broken translational symmetry in the x-y plane. Here, w…
Negative quantum friction in nanoscale water flows: the Wigner picture
Istituto per le Applicazioni del Calcolo, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche（计算应用研究所，意大利国家研究委员会）；INFN Tor Vergata（托尔维加塔国立核物理研究所）；Department of Physics, Harvard University（哈佛大学物理系）；School of Engineering & Applied Sciences, Harvard University（哈佛大学生物工程与应用科学学院）；Center for Life Nano- & Neuro-Science, Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia（意大利理工大学生命纳米与神经科学中心）
A floating Wigner crystal differs from the standard one by a spatial averaging over positions of the Wigner-crystal lattice. It has the same internal structure as the fixed crystal, but contrary to it, takes into account rotational and/or translational symmetry of the underlying jellium background. We study properties of a floating Wigner molecule in few-electron spin-polarized quantum dots, and show that the floating solid has the lower energy than the standard Wigner crystal with fixed lattice points. We also argue that internal rotational symmetry of individual dots can be broken in arrays …
Visualizing the Impact of Quenched Disorder on 2D Electron Wigner Solids
University of California, Berkeley（加州大学伯克利分校）；Flatiron Institute（平顿研究所）；University of New Mexico（新墨西哥大学）；Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory（劳伦斯伯克利国家实验室）；Hofstra University（霍夫斯特拉大学）；Arizona State University（亚利桑那州立大学）；National Institute for Materials Science（日本国立材料研究所）
We consider a system of one-dimensional spinless particles interacting via long-range repulsion. In the limit of strong interactions the system is a Wigner crystal, with excitations analogous to phonons in solids. In a harmonic crystal the phonons do not interact, and the system never reaches thermal equilibrium. We account for the anharmonism of the Wigner crystal and find the rate at which it approaches equilibrium. The full equilibration of the system requires umklapp scattering of phonons, resulting in exponential suppression of the equilibration rate at low temperatures.
Terahertz electrodynamics in a zero-field Wigner crystal
University of California, Berkeley（加州大学伯克利分校）；Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory（劳伦斯伯克利国家实验室）；Kavli Energy NanoScience Institute（卡弗里纳米科学能源研究所）；University of Florida（佛罗里达大学）；National Institute for Materials Science（日本物质材料研究机构）
We discuss the tight-binding models of solid state physics with the $Z_2$ sublattice symmetry in the presence of elastic deformations, and their important particular case -the tight binding model of graphene. In order to describe the dynamics of electronic quasiparticles we explore Wigner-Weyl formalism. It allows to calculate the two-point Green's function in the presence of both slowly varying external electromagnetic fields and the inhomogeneous modification of the hopping parameters resulted from the elastic deformations. The developed formalism allows us to consider the influence of elast…
Coupled semiconductor quantum dots form artificial molecules where relevant energy scales controlling the interacting ground state can be easily tuned. By applying an external magnetic field it is possible to drive the system from a weak to a strong correlation regime where eventually electrons localize in space in an ordered manner reminiscent of the two-dimensional Wigner crystal. We explore the phase diagram of such "Wigner molecules" analyzing the angular correlation function obtained by the Configuration Interaction solution of the full interacting Hamiltonian. Focus is on the role of tun…
We perform unrestricted Hartree-Fock (HF) calculations for electrons in a parabolic quantum dot at zero magnetic field. The crossover from Fermi liquid to Wigner molecule behavior is studied for up to eight electrons and various spin components $S_z$. We compare the results with numerically exact path-integral Monte Carlo simulations and earlier HF studies. Even in the strongly correlated regime the symmetry breaking HF solutions provide accurate estimates for the energies and describe the one-particle densities qualitatively. However, the HF approximation favors the formation of a Wigner mole…
In high magnetic fields ($B$), two dimensional electron systems (2DESs) can form a number of phases in which interelectron repulsion plays the central role, since the kinetic energy is frozen out by Landau quantization. These phases include the well-known liquids of the fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE), as well as solid phases with broken spatial symmetry and crystalline order. Solids can occur at the low Landau filling ($ν$) termination of the FQHE series, but also within integer quantum Hall effects (IQHEs). Here, we present microwave spectroscopy studies of wide quantum wells (WQWs). T…
Using derivative expansion applied to the Wigner transform of the two - point Green function we analyse the anomalous quantum Hall effect (AQHE), and the chiral magnetic effect (CME). The corresponding currents are proportional to the momentum space topological invariants. We reproduce the conventional expression for the Hall conductivity in $2+1$ D. In $3+1$ D our analysis allows to explain systematically the AQHE in topological insulators and Weyl semimetals. At the same time using this method it may be proved, that the equilibrium CME is absent in the wide class of solids, as well as in the…
At the low Landau filling factor $(ν)$ termination of the fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE) series, two-dimensional electron systems (2DESs) exhibit an insulating phase that is understood as a form of pinned Wigner solid. Here we use microwave spectroscopy to probe the transition to the insulator for a wide quantum well (WQW) sample that can support single-layer or bilayer states depending on its overall carrier density, $n$. We find the insulator exhibits a resonance, which is characteristic of a bilayer solid. The resonance also reveals a pair of transitions within the solid, which are n…
