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Transport evidence for a sliding two-dimensional quantum electron solid
Ignited by the discovery of the metal-insulator transition, the behaviour of low-disorder two-dimensional (2D) electron systems is currently the focus of a great deal of attention. In the strongly interacting limit, electrons are expected to crystallize into a quantum Wigner crystal, but no definiti...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2018
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6143544/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30228256 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-06332-9 |
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author | Brussarski, Pedro Li, S. Kravchenko, S. V. Shashkin, A. A. Sarachik, M. P. |
author_facet | Brussarski, Pedro Li, S. Kravchenko, S. V. Shashkin, A. A. Sarachik, M. P. |
author_sort | Brussarski, Pedro |
collection | PubMed |
description | Ignited by the discovery of the metal-insulator transition, the behaviour of low-disorder two-dimensional (2D) electron systems is currently the focus of a great deal of attention. In the strongly interacting limit, electrons are expected to crystallize into a quantum Wigner crystal, but no definitive evidence for this effect has been obtained despite much experimental effort over the years. Here, studying the insulating state of a 2D electron system in silicon, we have found two-threshold voltage-current characteristics with a dramatic increase in noise between the two threshold voltages. This behaviour cannot be described within existing traditional models. On the other hand, it is strikingly similar to that observed for the collective depinning of the vortex lattice in type-II superconductors. Adapting the model used for vortexes to the case of an electron solid yields good agreement with our experimental results, favouring the quantum electron solid as the origin of the low-density state. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6143544 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-61435442018-09-24 Transport evidence for a sliding two-dimensional quantum electron solid Brussarski, Pedro Li, S. Kravchenko, S. V. Shashkin, A. A. Sarachik, M. P. Nat Commun Article Ignited by the discovery of the metal-insulator transition, the behaviour of low-disorder two-dimensional (2D) electron systems is currently the focus of a great deal of attention. In the strongly interacting limit, electrons are expected to crystallize into a quantum Wigner crystal, but no definitive evidence for this effect has been obtained despite much experimental effort over the years. Here, studying the insulating state of a 2D electron system in silicon, we have found two-threshold voltage-current characteristics with a dramatic increase in noise between the two threshold voltages. This behaviour cannot be described within existing traditional models. On the other hand, it is strikingly similar to that observed for the collective depinning of the vortex lattice in type-II superconductors. Adapting the model used for vortexes to the case of an electron solid yields good agreement with our experimental results, favouring the quantum electron solid as the origin of the low-density state. Nature Publishing Group UK 2018-09-18 /pmc/articles/PMC6143544/ /pubmed/30228256 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-06332-9 Text en © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
spellingShingle | Article Brussarski, Pedro Li, S. Kravchenko, S. V. Shashkin, A. A. Sarachik, M. P. Transport evidence for a sliding two-dimensional quantum electron solid |
title | Transport evidence for a sliding two-dimensional quantum electron solid |
title_full | Transport evidence for a sliding two-dimensional quantum electron solid |
title_fullStr | Transport evidence for a sliding two-dimensional quantum electron solid |
title_full_unstemmed | Transport evidence for a sliding two-dimensional quantum electron solid |
title_short | Transport evidence for a sliding two-dimensional quantum electron solid |
title_sort | transport evidence for a sliding two-dimensional quantum electron solid |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6143544/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30228256 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-06332-9 |
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