English

Towards a microscopic model for an electronic quantum charge liquid

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2026-04-30 v1 Statistical Mechanics Quantum Physics

Abstract

We provide a route to constructing an electronic quantum charge liquid (QCL), a state made up of fermions at fractional filling of a lattice that does not break translation. Starting with spinless fermions at filling ν=3/2\nu=3/2 we pair them to get bosons at filling ν=3/4\nu=3/4 per unit cell. The tetramer model, a generalization of the dimer model, on the square lattice is evaluated as a candidate bosonic QCL at filling ν=3/4\nu = 3/4. It is shown that these models exhibit a local Z4\mathbb{Z}_4 symmetry. Upon numerical study of a family of tetramer wavefunctions it is found that while one is gapless due to U(1)3\mathrm{U}(1)^3 symmetry at least one other can be definitively shown to be gapped. The gapped nature of this state, along with its Z4\mathbb{Z}_4 symmetry, leads us to propose that it is an example of the elusive bosonic QCL displaying the minimal Z4\mathbb{Z}_4 topological order. We conclude by discussing possible extensions to other lattice geometries, electronic QCLs, and to Rydberg atoms.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2604.25992,
  title  = {Towards a microscopic model for an electronic quantum charge liquid},
  author = {Jacob R. Taylor and Sankar Das Sarma and Seth Musser},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.25992},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

8 pages, 6 figures

R2 v1 2026-07-01T12:39:52.375Z