Related papers: Wigner crystal physics in quantum wires
We consider interacting electrons in a quantum wire in the case of a shallow confining potential and low electron density. In a certain range of densities, the electrons form a two-row (zigzag) Wigner crystal whose spin properties are…
The existence of Wigner crystallization, one of the most significant hallmarks of strong electron correlations, has to date only been definitively observed in two-dimensional systems. In one-dimensional (1D) quantum wires Wigner crystals…
We consider a long quantum wire at low electron densities. In this strong interaction regime a Wigner crystal may form, in which electrons comprise an antiferromagnetic Heisenberg spin chain. The coupling constant J is exponentially small,…
Upon increasing the electron density in a quantum wire, the one-dimensional electron system undergoes a transition to a quasi-one-dimensional state. In the absence of interactions between electrons, this corresponds to filling up the second…
We study the effect of Coulomb interactions on the conductance of a single-mode quantum wire connecting two bulk leads. When the density of electrons in the wire is very low, they arrange in a finite-length Wigner crystal. In this regime…
The Wigner-crystal phase of two-dimensional electrons interacting via the Coulomb repulsion and subject to a strong Rashba spin-orbit coupling is investigated. For low enough electronic densities the spin-orbit band splitting can be larger…
We study scattering of charge and spin excitations in a system of interacting electrons in one dimension. At low densities electrons form a one-dimensional Wigner crystal. To first approximation the charge excitations are the phonons in the…
Using many-body configuration interaction techniques we show that Wigner crystallization occurs at the zigzag edges of graphene at surprisingly high electronic densities up to $0.8$ $\mbox{nm}^{-1}$. In contrast with one-dimensional…
We study the transport of electrons through a long quantum wire connecting two bulk leads. As the electron density in the wire is lowered, the Coulomb interactions lead to short-range crystalline ordering of electrons. In this Wigner…
A system of confined charged electrons interacting via the long-range Coulomb force can form a Wigner crystal due to their mutual repulsion. This happens when the potential energy of the system dominates over its kinetic energy, i.e., at…
At very low density, the electrons in a uniform electron gas spontaneously break symmetry and form a crystalline lattice called a Wigner crystal. But which type of crystal will the electrons form? We report a numerical study of the density…
We study the quantum phase transition of interacting electrons in quantum wires from a one-dimensional (1D) linear configuration to a quasi-1D zigzag arrangement using quantum Monte Carlo methods. As the density increases from its lowest…
The quantum crystal of electrons, predicted more than eighty years ago by Eugene Wigner, is still one of the most elusive states of matter. Here, we present experiments that observe the one-dimensional Wigner crystal directly, by imaging…
A one--dimensional gas of electrons interacting with long--range Coulomb forces ($V(r) \approx 1/r$) is investigated. The excitation spectrum consists of separate collective charge and spin modes, with the charge excitation energies in…
The crystallization of electrons in quasi low-dimensional solids is studied in a model which retains the full three-dimensional nature of the Coulomb interactions. We show that restricting the electron motion to layers (or chains) gives…
One of the most fascinating ground states of an interacting electron system is the so-called Wigner crystal where the electrons, in order to minimize their repulsive Coulomb energy, form an ordered array. Here we report measurements of the…
We use Density Functional Theory to study interacting spinless electrons on a one-dimensional quantum ring in the density range where the system undergoes Wigner crystallization. The Wigner transition leads to a drastic ``collective''…
When the Coulomb repulsion between electrons dominates over their kinetic energy, electrons in two dimensional systems were predicted to spontaneously break continuous translation symmetry and form a quantum crystal. Efforts to observe this…
We theoretically study the effects of spin-orbit coupling on spin exchange in a low-density Wigner crystal. In addition to the familiar antiferromagnetic Heisenberg exchange, we find general anisotropic interactions in spin space if the…
It is demonstrated that there is anti-ferromagnetic spin-spin interaction between nearest electrons in the 2D Wigner crystal. This is also valid for the Wigner liquid - the state with destroyed long-range order but preserved short-range…