English

Pseudo-spin order of Wigner crystals in multi-valley electron gases

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2023-07-12 v1 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics

Abstract

We study multi-valley electron gases in the low density (rs1r_s \gg 1) limit. Here the ground-state is always a Wigner crystal (WC), with additional pseudo-spin order where the pseudo-spins are related to valley occupancies. Depending on the symmetries of the host semiconductor and the values of the parameters such as the anisotropy of the effective mass tensors, we find a striped or chiral pseudo-spin antiferromagnet, or a time-reversal symmetry breaking orbital loop-current ordered pseudo-spin ferromagnet. Our theory applies to the recently-discovered WC states in AlAs and in mono and bilayer transition metal dichalcogenides. We identify a set of interesting electronic liquid crystalline phases that could arise by continuous quantum melting of such WCs.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2210.09326,
  title  = {Pseudo-spin order of Wigner crystals in multi-valley electron gases},
  author = {Vladimir Calvera and Steven A. Kivelson and Erez Berg},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2210.09326},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

21 pages (including Appendices), 11 figures