Observation of an electronic microemulsion phase emerging from a quantum crystal-to-liquid transition
Abstract
Strongly interacting electronic systems possess rich phase diagrams resulting from the competition between different quantum ground states. A general mechanism that relieves this frustration is the emergence of microemulsion phases, where regions of different phase self-organize across multiple length scales. The experimental characterization of these phases often poses significant challenges, as the long-range Coulomb interaction microscopically mingles the competing states. Here, we use cryogenic reflectance and magneto-optical spectroscopy to observe the signatures of the mixed state between an electronic Wigner crystal and an electron liquid in a MoSe2 monolayer. We find that the transit into this 'microemulsion' state is marked by anomalies in exciton reflectance, spin susceptibility, and Umklapp scattering, establishing it as a distinct phase of electronic matter. Our study of the two-dimensional electronic microemulsion phase elucidates the physics of novel correlated electron states with strong Coulomb interactions.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2311.18069,
title = {Observation of an electronic microemulsion phase emerging from a quantum crystal-to-liquid transition},
author = {Jiho Sung and Jue Wang and Ilya Esterlis and Pavel A. Volkov and Giovanni Scuri and You Zhou and Elise Brutschea and Takashi Taniguchi and Kenji Watanabe and Yubo Yang and Miguel A. Morales and Shiwei Zhang and Andrew J. Millis and Mikhail D. Lukin and Philip Kim and Eugene Demler and Hongkun Park},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2311.18069},
year = {2025}
}