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Journal of Physics Condensed Matter

Rotating Wigner molecules and spin-related behaviors in quantum rings

Ning Yang, Jia‐Lin Zhu, Zhensheng Dai

Published Jun 26, 2008• 12 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The trial wavefunctions for few-electron quantum rings are presented to describe the spin-dependent rotating Wigner molecule states. The wavefunctions are constructed from the single-particle orbits which contain two variational parameters to describe the shape and size dependence of electron localization in the ring-like confinement. They can explicitly show the size dependence of single-particle orbital occupation to give an understanding of the spin rules of ground states without magnetic fields. They can also correctly describe the spin and angular momentum transitions in magnetic fields. By examining the von Neumann entropy, it is demonstrated that the wavefunctions can illustrate the entanglement between electrons in quantum rings, including the AB oscillations as well as the spin and size dependence of the entropy. Such trial wavefunctions will be useful in investigating spin-related quantum behaviors of a few electrons in quantum rings.

DOI
10.1088/0953-8984/20/29/295202

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The trial wavefunctions for few-electron quantum rings are presented to describe the spin-dependent rotating Wigner molecule states. The wavefunctions are constructed from the single-particle orbits which contain two variational parameters to describe the shape and size dependence of electron localization in the ring-like confinement. They can explicitly show the size dependence of single-particle orbital occupation to give an understanding of the spin rules of ground states without magnetic fields. They can also correctly describe the spin and angular momentum transitions in magnetic fields. By examining the von Neumann entropy, it is demonstrated that the wavefunctions can illustrate the entanglement between electrons in quantum rings, including the AB oscillations as well as the spin and size dependence of the entropy. Such trial wavefunctions will be useful in investigating spin-related quantum behaviors of a few electrons in quantum rings.
The studies on quantum dots and rings containing $4\ensuremath{\sim}6$ electrons reveal that the shapes of the systems have great impact on the spin transitions of the ground states. For five-electron case, the different shapes lead to the different transition processes in quantum dots and rings. For six-electron case, the ring confinement forbids the spin transition, which really exists in dot confinement. The investigations on the angular momentum transitions in magnetic fields show that the sensibility of the transitions to the size of the system depends remarkably on the particle number. The four-electron case is almost size insensitive but the five-electron case has obvious size dependence. It is also found that the behaviors of the few-electron entanglement in quantum dots and rings are quite different. The entanglement entropies in quantum dots increase with the increase in the magnetic field but exhibit Aharonov-Bohm oscillation patterns in narrow rings. The studies of the shape, size, and particle number effects are important for understanding the liquid-to-crystal transitions, and may be helpful for the manipulation of electronic states in quantum dots and rings.
We explore the correlations and entanglements of exact-diagonalized few-electron wave functions in a quantum dot in magnetic fields without the Zeeman splitting. With the increase of the field, the lowest states with different spins gradually form a narrow band and the electronic states undergo a transition from liquids to rotating Wigner molecules which are accompanied by different characters of charge correlations. For both the liquid and crystal states, the spin conditional probability densities show magnetic couplings between the particles which depend on the particle numbers, the total spins and the angular momenta of the states. The von Neumann entropies show the spin-dependent entanglements between electrons. The regular magnetic-coupling oscillations and converging entanglement entropies emerge in the rotating Wigner molecular states.
We consider few-electron concentric double quantum rings with parabolic confining potential and compare the ground-state energies calculated by exact diagonalization of the Hamiltonian, accurate quantum Monte Carlo, and local spin-density functional approaches. Electronic localization in one of the rings and the formation of rotating Wigner molecules is shown, respectively, from the one-body and the two-body density operators. As the confinement strength of the outer ring is finely increased, the circularly symmetric electron density exhibits a radial crossover from this ring to the inner one without altering the angular character of the system.
Exact-diagonalization calculations for N=3N=3N=3 electrons in anisotropic quantum dots, covering a broad range of confinement anisotropies and strength of interelectron repulsion, are presented for zero and low magnetic fields. The excitation spectra are analyzed as a function of the strength of the magnetic field and for increasing quantum-dot anisotropy. Analysis of the intrinsic structure of the many-body wave functions through spin-resolved two-point correlations reveals that electrons tend to localize forming Wigner molecules. For certain ranges of dot parameters (mainly at strong anisotropy), the Wigner molecules acquire a linear geometry, and the associated wave functions with a spin projection Sz=1∕2{S}_{z}=1∕2Sz​=1∕2 are similar to the representative class of strongly entangled states referred to as the WWW states. For other ranges of parameters (mainly at intermediate anisotropy), the Wigner molecules exhibit a more complex structure consisting of two mirror isosceles triangles. This latter structure can be viewed as an embryonic unit of a zigzag Wigner crystal in quantum wires. The degree of entanglement in three-electron quantum dots can be quantified through the use of the von Neumann entropy.
In this work we investigate Wigner localization at very low densities by means of the exact diagonalization of the Hamiltonian. This yields numerically exact results. In particular, we study a quasi-one-dimensional system of two electrons that are confined to a ring by three-dimensional gaussians placed along the ring perimeter. To characterize the Wigner localization we study several appropriate observables, namely the two-body reduced density matrix, the localization tensor and the particle-hole entropy. We show that the localization tensor is the most promising quantity to study Wigner localization since it accurately captures the transition from the delocalized to the localized state and it can be applied to systems of all sizes.
This paper presents a few case studies of finite electron systems for which strong correlations play a dominant role. In simple metal clusters, the valence electrons determine the stability and shape of the clusters. The ionic skeleton of alkali metals is soft, and cluster geometries are often solely determined by electron correlations. In quantum dots and rings, the electrons may be confined by an external electrostatic potential formed by a gated heterostructure. In the low-density limit, the electrons may form the so-called Wigner molecules, for which the many-body quantum spectra reveal the classical vibration modes. High rotational states increase the tendency for the electrons to localize. At low angular momenta, the electrons may form a quantum Hall liquid with vortices. In this case, the vortices act as quasi-particles with long-range effective interactions that localize in a vortex molecule, in much analogy with the electron localization at strong rotation.