The importance of interactions in the formation of wigner crystal at two-dimensional anyonic systems

A. Holas, Norman Henry March

Zhihao Xu, Linhu Li, Gao Xianlong +1 more

The ground state properties of the Hubbard model with or without long-range interactions in the regime with strongly repulsive on-site interactions are investigated by means of the exact diagonalization method. We show that the appearance of N-crests in the density profile of a trapped N-fermion system is a natural result of 'fermionization' between antiparallel-spin fermions in the strongly repulsive limit and cannot be taken as the only signature of the Wigner crystal phase, as the static structure factor does not show any signature of crystallization. In contrast, both the density distribution and the static structure factor of the Hubbard model with strong long-range interactions display clear signatures of the Wigner crystal phase. Our results indicate the important role of long-range interaction in the formation of the Wigner crystal phase.

Talbot Knighton

Brandon P. van Zyl, W. Ferguson

The liquid-to-ordered phase transition in a bilayer system of fermions is studied within the context of our recently proposed density-functional theory [B. P. van Zyl, W. Kirkby, and W. Ferguson, Phys. Rev. A 92, 023614 (2015)]. In each two-dimensional layer, the fermions interact via a repulsive, isotropic dipolar interaction. The presence of a second layer introduces an attractive interlayer interaction, thereby allowing the presence of inhomogeneous density phases which would otherwise be energetically unfavorable. For any fixed layer separation, we find an instability to a commensurate one-dimensional stripe phase in each layer, which always precedes the formation of a triangular Wigner crystal. However, at a certain fixed coupling, tuning the separation can lead to the system favoring a commensurate triangular Wigner crystal, or one-dimensional stripe phase, completely bypassing the Fermi liquid state. While other crystalline symmetries, with energies lower than the liquid phase can be found, they are never allowed to form owing to their high energetic cost relative to the triangular Wigner crystal and stripe phase.

Valerii T. Dolgopolov

H. Maurey, Thierry Giamarchi

One-dimensional electron systems interacting with long-range Coulomb forces (quantum wires) show a Wigner crystal structure. We investigate in this paper the transport properties of such a Wigner crystal in the presence of impurities. Contrary to what happens when only short-range interactions are included, the system is dominated by 4${\mathit{k}}_{\mathit{F}}$ scattering on the impurities. There are two important length scales in such a problem: one is the pinning length above which the (quasi-)long-range order of the Wigner crystal is destroyed by disorder. The other length, ${\ensuremath{\xi}}_{\mathrm{cr}}$, is the length below which Coulomb interactions are not important and the system is behaving as a standard Luttinger liquid with short-range interactions. We obtain the frequency and temperature dependence of the conductivity. We show that such a system is very similar to a classical charge density wave pinned by impurities, but with important differences due to quantum fluctuations and long-range Coulomb interactions. Finally, we discuss our results in comparison with experimental systems.