Commensurate-incommensurate transition in frustrated Wigner crystals

التفاصيل البيبلوغرافية
العنوان: Commensurate-incommensurate transition in frustrated Wigner crystals
المؤلفون: Menu, Raphaël, Malo, Jorge Yago, Vuletić, Vladan, Chiofalo, Maria Luisa, Morigi, Giovanna
سنة النشر: 2023
المجموعة: Condensed Matter
مصطلحات موضوعية: Condensed Matter - Quantum Gases, Condensed Matter - Strongly Correlated Electrons
الوصف: Geometric frustration in systems with long-range interactions is a largely unexplored phenomenon. In this work we analyse the ground state emerging from the competition between a periodic potential and a Wigner crystal in one dimension, consisting of a selforganized chain of particles with the same charge. This system is a paradigmatic realization of the Frenkel-Kontorova model with Coulomb interactions. We derive the action of a Coulomb soliton in the continuum limit and demonstrate the mapping to a massive (1+1) Thirring model with long-range interactions. Here, the solitons are charged fermionic excitations over an effective Dirac sea. The mismatch between the periodicities of potential and chain, giving rise to frustration, is a chemical potential whose amplitude is majorly determined by the Coulomb self-energy. The mean-field limit is a long-range antiferromagnetic spin chain with uniform magnetic field and predicts that the commensurate, periodic structures form a complete devil's staircase as a function of the charge density. Each step of the staircase correspond to the interval of stability of a stable commensurate phase and scales with the number $N$ of charges as $1/\ln N$. This implies that there is no commensurate-incommensurate phase transition in the thermodynamic limit. For finite systems, however, the ground state has a fractal structure that could be measured in experiments with laser-cooled ions in traps.
نوع الوثيقة: Working Paper
URL الوصول: http://arxiv.org/abs/2311.14396
رقم الأكسشن: edsarx.2311.14396
قاعدة البيانات: arXiv