Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

arXiv:2308.16243 · Physical Review Letters

Local Noise Spectroscopy of Wigner Crystals in Two-Dimensional Materials

Pavel E. Dolgirev, Ilya Esterlis, Alexander Zibrov, Mikhail D. Lukin, Thierry Giamarchi, Eugene Demler

Published Jun 14, 2024• 9 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We propose local electromagnetic noise spectroscopy as a versatile and noninvasive tool to study Wigner crystal phases of strongly interacting two-dimensional electronic systems. In-plane imaging of the local noise is predicted to enable single-site resolution of the electron crystal when the sample-probe distance is less than the interelectron separation. At larger sample-probe distances, noise spectroscopy encodes information about the low-energy Wigner crystal phonons, including the dispersion of the transverse shear mode, the pinning resonance due to disorder, and optical modes emerging, for instance, in bilayer crystals. We discuss the potential utility of local noise probes in analyzing the rich set of phenomena expected to occur in the vicinity of the melting transition.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.132.246504

Related papers

Single-spin qubit magnetic spectroscopy of two-dimensional superconductivity

Shubhayu Chatterjee, Pavel E. Dolgirev, Ilya Esterlis +4 more

A single-spin qubit placed near the surface of a conductor acquires an additional contribution to its 1/T 1 relaxation rate due to magnetic noise created by electric current fluctuations in the material.We analyze this technique as a wireless probe of superconductivity in atomically thin two-dimensional materials.At temperatures T T c , the dominant contribution to the qubit relaxation rate is due to transverse electric current fluctuations arising from quasiparticle excitations.We demonstrate that this method enables detection of metal-to-superconductor transitions, as well as investigation of the symmetry of the superconducting gap function, through the noise scaling with temperature.We show that scaling of the noise with sample-probe distance provides a window into the nonlocal quasistatic conductivity of superconductors, both clean and disordered.At low temperatures the quasiparticle fluctuations get suppressed, yet the noise can be substantial due to resonant contributions from collective longitudinal modes, such as plasmons in monolayers and Josephson plasmons in bilayers.Potential experimental implications are discussed.

arXiv:2106.03859•Physical Review Research•Jan 10, 2022•25 citations

Thermal melting of a quantum electron solid in the presence of strong disorder: Anderson localization versus the Wigner crystal

DinhDuy Vu, S. Das Sarma

We consider the temperature-induced melting of a Wigner solid in one-dimensional (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) lattices of electrons interacting via the long-range Coulomb interaction in the presence of strong disorder arising from charged impurities in the system. The system simulates semiconductor-based 2D electron layers where Wigner crystallization is often claimed to be observed experimentally. Using exact diagonalization and utilizing the inverse participation ratio as well as conductance to distinguish between the localized insulating solid phase and the extended metallic liquid phase, we find that the effective melting temperature may be strongly enhanced by disorder since the disordered crystal typically could be in a localized glassy state incorporating the combined nonperturbative physics of both Anderson localization and Wigner crystallization. This disorder-induced enhancement of the melting temperature may explain why experiments often manage to observe insulating disorder-pinned Wigner solids in spite of the experimental temperature being decisively far above the theoretical melting temperature of the pristine Wigner crystal phase in many cases.

arXiv:2110.06229•Physical review. B./Physical review. B•Sep 8, 2022•6 citations

Quantum paracrystalline shear modes of the electron liquid

Jun Yong Khoo, Po-Yao Chang, Falko Pientka +1 more

Unlike classical fluids, a quantum Fermi liquid can support a long-lived and propagating shear sound wave at arbitrarily small wave vectors and frequencies, reminiscent of the transverse sound in crystals, despite lacking any form of long-range crystalline order. This mode is expected to be present in moderately interacting metals where the quasiparticle mass is renormalized to be more than twice the bare mass in two dimensions (2D), but it has remained undetected because it is hard to excite since it does not involve charge density fluctuations, in contrast to the conventional plasma mode. In this work we propose a strategy to excite and detect this unconventional mode in clean metallic channels. We show that the shear sound is responsible for the appearance of sharp dips in the ac conductance of narrow channels at resonant frequencies matching its dispersion. The liquid resonates while minimizing its dissipation in an analogous fashion to a sliding crystal. Ultraclean 2D materials that can be tuned toward the Wigner crystallization transition such as silicon metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors, MgZnO/ZnO, p-GaAs, and AlAs quantum wells are promising platforms to experimentally discover the shear sound.

arXiv:2001.06496•Physical review. B./Physical review. B•Aug 31, 2020•15 citations

Probing many-body localization by spin noise spectroscopy

Dibyendu Roy, Rajeev Singh, Roderich Moessner

We propose to apply spin noise spectroscopy (SNS) to detect many-body localization (MBL) in disordered spin systems. The SNS methods are relatively noninvasive techniques to probe spontaneous spin fluctuations. Here, we show that the spin noise signals obtained by cross-correlation SNS with two probe beams can be used to separate the MBL phase from a noninteracting Anderson localized phase and a delocalized (diffusive) phase in the studied models for which we numerically calculate real-time spin noise signals and their power spectra. For an archetypical case of the disordered XXZ spin chain, we also develop a simple phenomenological model.

arXiv:1506.05116•Physical Review B•Nov 23, 2015•24 citations

Interstitial-Induced Ferromagnetism in a Two-Dimensional Wigner Crystal

Kyung-Su Kim, Chaitanya Murthy, Akshat Pandey +1 more

The two-dimensional Wigner crystal (WC) occurs in the strongly interacting regime (r_{s}≫1) of the two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG). The magnetism of a pure WC is determined by tunneling processes that induce multispin ring-exchange interactions, resulting in fully polarized ferromagnetism for large enough r_{s}. Recently, Hossain et al. [Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 117, 32244 (2020)PNASA60027-842410.1073/pnas.2018248117] reported the occurrence of a fully polarized ferromagnetic insulator at r_{s}≳35 in an AlAs quantum well, but at temperatures orders of magnitude larger than the predicted exchange energies for the pure WC. Here, we analyze the large r_{s} dynamics of an interstitial defect in the WC, and show that it produces local ferromagnetism with much higher energy scales. Three hopping processes are dominant, which favor a large, fully polarized ferromagnetic polaron. Based on the above results, we speculate concerning the phenomenology of the magnetism near the metal-insulator transition of the 2DEG.

arXiv:2206.07191•Physical Review Letters•Nov 22, 2022•21 citations

Imaging the electronic Wigner crystal in one dimension

I. Shapir, A. Hamo, S. Pecker +4 more

The quantum crystal of electrons, predicted more than 80 years ago by Eugene Wigner, remains one of the most elusive states of matter. In this study, we observed the one-dimensional Wigner crystal directly by imaging its charge density in real space. To image, with minimal invasiveness, the many-body electronic density of a carbon nanotube, we used another nanotube as a scanning-charge perturbation. The images we obtained of a few electrons confined in one dimension match the theoretical predictions for strongly interacting crystals. The quantum nature of the crystal emerges in the observed collective tunneling through a potential barrier. These experiments provide the direct evidence for the formation of small Wigner crystals and open the way for studying other fragile interacting states by imaging their many-body density in real space.

arXiv:1803.08523•Science•May 30, 2019•125 citations
We propose local electromagnetic noise spectroscopy as a versatile and noninvasive tool to study Wigner crystal phases of strongly interacting two-dimensional electronic systems. In-plane imaging of the local noise is predicted to enable single-site resolution of the electron crystal when the sample-probe distance is less than the interelectron separation. At larger sample-probe distances, noise spectroscopy encodes information about the low-energy Wigner crystal phonons, including the dispersion of the transverse shear mode, the pinning resonance due to disorder, and optical modes emerging, for instance, in bilayer crystals. We discuss the potential utility of local noise probes in analyzing the rich set of phenomena expected to occur in the vicinity of the melting transition.
A single-spin qubit placed near the surface of a conductor acquires an additional contribution to its 1/T 1 relaxation rate due to magnetic noise created by electric current fluctuations in the material.We analyze this technique as a wireless probe of superconductivity in atomically thin two-dimensional materials.At temperatures T T c , the dominant contribution to the qubit relaxation rate is due to transverse electric current fluctuations arising from quasiparticle excitations.We demonstrate that this method enables detection of metal-to-superconductor transitions, as well as investigation of the symmetry of the superconducting gap function, through the noise scaling with temperature.We show that scaling of the noise with sample-probe distance provides a window into the nonlocal quasistatic conductivity of superconductors, both clean and disordered.At low temperatures the quasiparticle fluctuations get suppressed, yet the noise can be substantial due to resonant contributions from collective longitudinal modes, such as plasmons in monolayers and Josephson plasmons in bilayers.Potential experimental implications are discussed.
We consider the temperature-induced melting of a Wigner solid in one-dimensional (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) lattices of electrons interacting via the long-range Coulomb interaction in the presence of strong disorder arising from charged impurities in the system. The system simulates semiconductor-based 2D electron layers where Wigner crystallization is often claimed to be observed experimentally. Using exact diagonalization and utilizing the inverse participation ratio as well as conductance to distinguish between the localized insulating solid phase and the extended metallic liquid phase, we find that the effective melting temperature may be strongly enhanced by disorder since the disordered crystal typically could be in a localized glassy state incorporating the combined nonperturbative physics of both Anderson localization and Wigner crystallization. This disorder-induced enhancement of the melting temperature may explain why experiments often manage to observe insulating disorder-pinned Wigner solids in spite of the experimental temperature being decisively far above the theoretical melting temperature of the pristine Wigner crystal phase in many cases.
Unlike classical fluids, a quantum Fermi liquid can support a long-lived and propagating shear sound wave at arbitrarily small wave vectors and frequencies, reminiscent of the transverse sound in crystals, despite lacking any form of long-range crystalline order. This mode is expected to be present in moderately interacting metals where the quasiparticle mass is renormalized to be more than twice the bare mass in two dimensions (2D), but it has remained undetected because it is hard to excite since it does not involve charge density fluctuations, in contrast to the conventional plasma mode. In this work we propose a strategy to excite and detect this unconventional mode in clean metallic channels. We show that the shear sound is responsible for the appearance of sharp dips in the ac conductance of narrow channels at resonant frequencies matching its dispersion. The liquid resonates while minimizing its dissipation in an analogous fashion to a sliding crystal. Ultraclean 2D materials that can be tuned toward the Wigner crystallization transition such as silicon metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors, MgZnO/ZnO, p-GaAs, and AlAs quantum wells are promising platforms to experimentally discover the shear sound.
We propose to apply spin noise spectroscopy (SNS) to detect many-body localization (MBL) in disordered spin systems. The SNS methods are relatively noninvasive techniques to probe spontaneous spin fluctuations. Here, we show that the spin noise signals obtained by cross-correlation SNS with two probe beams can be used to separate the MBL phase from a noninteracting Anderson localized phase and a delocalized (diffusive) phase in the studied models for which we numerically calculate real-time spin noise signals and their power spectra. For an archetypical case of the disordered XXZ spin chain, we also develop a simple phenomenological model.
The two-dimensional Wigner crystal (WC) occurs in the strongly interacting regime (r_{s}≫1) of the two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG). The magnetism of a pure WC is determined by tunneling processes that induce multispin ring-exchange interactions, resulting in fully polarized ferromagnetism for large enough r_{s}. Recently, Hossain et al. [Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 117, 32244 (2020)PNASA60027-842410.1073/pnas.2018248117] reported the occurrence of a fully polarized ferromagnetic insulator at r_{s}≳35 in an AlAs quantum well, but at temperatures orders of magnitude larger than the predicted exchange energies for the pure WC. Here, we analyze the large r_{s} dynamics of an interstitial defect in the WC, and show that it produces local ferromagnetism with much higher energy scales. Three hopping processes are dominant, which favor a large, fully polarized ferromagnetic polaron. Based on the above results, we speculate concerning the phenomenology of the magnetism near the metal-insulator transition of the 2DEG.
The quantum crystal of electrons, predicted more than 80 years ago by Eugene Wigner, remains one of the most elusive states of matter. In this study, we observed the one-dimensional Wigner crystal directly by imaging its charge density in real space. To image, with minimal invasiveness, the many-body electronic density of a carbon nanotube, we used another nanotube as a scanning-charge perturbation. The images we obtained of a few electrons confined in one dimension match the theoretical predictions for strongly interacting crystals. The quantum nature of the crystal emerges in the observed collective tunneling through a potential barrier. These experiments provide the direct evidence for the formation of small Wigner crystals and open the way for studying other fragile interacting states by imaging their many-body density in real space.