Wigner solid or Anderson solid -- 2D electrons in strong disorder
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
2026-01-08 v1 Disordered Systems and Neural Networks
Materials Science
Strongly Correlated Electrons
Abstract
Critically analyzing recent STM and transport experiments [Z. Ge, et al, arXiv:2510.12009] on 2D electron systems in the presence of random quenched impurities, we argue that the resulting low-density putative "solid" phase reported experimentally is better described as an Anderson solid with the carriers randomly spatially localized by impurities than as a Wigner solid where the carriers form a crystal due to an interaction-induced spontaneous breaking of the translational symmetry. In strongly disordered systems, the resulting solid is amorphous, which is adiabatically connected to the infinite disorder Anderson fixed point rather than the zero disorder Wigner crystal fixed point.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2601.03521,
title = {Wigner solid or Anderson solid -- 2D electrons in strong disorder},
author = {Aryaman Babbar and Zi-Jian Li and Sankar Das Sarma},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.03521},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
6+18 pages, 4+18 figures