Collective transport of charges in charge density wave systems based on traveling soliton lattices

Abstract

Solitons are peculiar excitations that appear in a wide range of nonlinear systems such as in fluids or optics. We show here that the collective transport of charges observed in charge density wave (CDW) systems can be explained by using a similar theory based on a traveling soliton lattice. Coherent x-ray diffraction experiment performed in the sliding state of a CDW material reveals peculiar diffraction patterns in good agreement with this assumption. Therefore, the collective transport of charges in CDW systems may be due to a nonlinear interaction leading to a self-localized excitation, carrying charges without deformation through the sample, on top of the CDW ground state. This single theory explains why charges remain spatially correlated over very long distances and reconciles the main features of sliding CDW systems, either observed by transport measurements or diffraction.

3 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Electronic crystals: an experimental overview
• Charge and Spin Density Waves observed through their spatial fluctuations by coherent and simultaneous X-ray diffraction

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Evidence of Charge Density Wave transverse pinning by x-ray micro-diffraction
• Lock-in transition of charge density waves in quasi-one-dimensional conductors: reinterpretation of McMillan's theory
• Highly-enhanced propagation of long-range kinks in heterogeneous media
• Tracking defects of Electronic Crystals by Coherent X-ray Diffraction
• The essential role of surface pinning in the dynamics of charge density waves submitted to external dc fields
• Induced discommensurations in the lock-in transition of charge-density waves
• The importance of shear on the collective charge transport in CDWs revealed by an XFEL source