Sharp Tunneling Resonance from the Vibrations of an Electronic Wigner Crystal

Abstract

Photoemission and tunneling spectroscopies measure the energies at which single electrons can be added to or removed from an electronic system. Features observed in such spectra have revealed electrons coupling to vibrational modes of ions both in solids and in individual molecules. Here we report the discovery of a sharp resonance in the tunneling spectrum of a 2D electron system. Its behavior suggests that it originates from vibrational modes, not involving ionic motion, but instead arising from vibrations of spatial ordering of the electrons themselves. In a two-dimensional electronic system at very low temperatures and high magnetic fields, electrons can either condense into a variety of quantum Hall phases or arrange themselves into a highly ordered Wigner crystal lattice. Such spatially ordered phases of electrons are often electrically insulating and delicate and have proven very challenging to probe with conventional methods. Using a unique pulsed tunneling method capable of probing electron tunneling into insulating phases, we observe a sharp peak with dependencies on energy and other parameters that fit to models for vibrations of a Wigner crystal. The remarkable sharpness of the structure presents strong evidence of the existence of a Wigner crystal with long correlation length.

References in corpus (15)

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• Quantum Lifetime of Two-Dimensional Holes
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Cited by in corpus (46)

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• Competing correlated states around the zero field Wigner crystallization transition of electrons in two-dimensions
• Crystallization of Bosonic Quantum Hall States
• Roadmap for Photonics with 2D Materials
• Interaction Driven Quantum Hall Wedding cake-like Structures in Graphene Quantum Dots
• Crystallization in the Fractional Quantum Hall Regime Induced by Landau-level Mixing
• Edge Channels of Broken-Symmetry Quantum Hall States in Graphene probed by Atomic Force Microscopy
• Evidence of a two-stage melting of Wigner solids in two dimensions
• Thermal and quantum melting phase diagrams for a magnetic-field-induced Wigner solid
• Imaging the zigzag Wigner crystal in confinement-tunable quantum wires
• Anisotropic, two-dimensional, disordered Wigner solid
• Imaging anyons with scanning tunneling microscopy
• Full Momentum and Energy Resolved Spectral Function of a 2D Electronic System
• Interplay between fractional quantum Hall liquid and crystal phases at low filling
• Theory of the collective magnetophonon resonance and melting of the field-induced Wigner solid
• Competition between fractional quantum Hall liquid and Wigner solid at small fillings: Role of layer thickness and Landau level mixing
• Nonlinear Dynamics, Avalanches and Noise for Driven Wigner Crystals
• Hydrodynamics of plastic deformations in electronic crystals
• Electron Bubbles and the Structure of the Orbital Wavefunction
• Dynamic Response of Wigner Crystals
• A Highly Correlated Topological Bubble Phase of Composite Fermions
• Phase Space Crystal Vibrations: Chiral Edge States with Preserved Time-reversal Symmetry
• Particle-Hole Symmetry and the Reentrant Integer Quantum Hall Wigner Solid
• Microwave spectroscopic observation of a Wigner solid within the 1/2 fractional quantum Hall effect
• Signatures of correlated defects in an ultra-clean Wigner crystal in the extreme quantum limit
• Magnetotransport patterns of collective localization near $\nu =1$ in a high-mobility two-dimensional electron gas
• Drive Dependence of the Hall Angle for a Sliding Wigner Crystal in a Magnetic Field
• Stability of multielectron bubbles in high Landau levels
• Melting, Reentrant Ordering and Peak Effect for Wigner Crystals with Quenched and Thermal Disorder
• Exotic Bilayer Crystals in a Strong Magnetic Field
• Wigner solid pinning modes tuned by fractional quantum Hall states of a nearby layer
• Twistronics and moiré superlattice physics in 2D transition metal dichalcogenides
• Thermal Activation Signatures of the Anderson Insulator and the Wigner Solid forming near $\nu =1$
• Density Dependence of the Phases of the $\nu =1$ Integer Quantum Hall Plateau in Low Disorder Electron Gases
• Developing fractional quantum Hall states at $\nu$ = $\frac{1}{7}$ and $\frac{2}{11}$ in the presence of significant Landau level mixing
• Importance of electron-phonon coupling near the electron-liquid to Wigner-crystal transition in two-dimensional atomically thin materials
• Crystallization of the transdimensional electron liquid
• Strong interlayer charge transfer due to exciton condensation in an electrically-isolated GaAs quantum well bilayer
• A capacitance spectroscopy-based platform for realizing gate-defined electronic lattices
• Coexistence of two hole phases in high-quality $p$-GaAs/AlGaAs in the vicinity of Landau level filling factors $\nu$=1 and $\nu$=(1/3)
• Wigner solids of wide quantum wells near Landau filling $\nu =1$
• Phase transition from a composite fermion liquid to a Wigner solid in the lowest Landau level of ZnO
• Electronic phonon-induced magnetism in moiré Mott-Wigner crystals