Topological Phonon Modes in A Two-Dimensional Wigner Crystal

Abstract

We investigate the spin-orbit coupling effect in a two-dimensional Wigner crystal. We show that sufficiently strong spin-orbit coupling and an appropriate sign of g-factor could transform the Wigner crystal to a topological phonon system. We demonstrate the existence of chiral phonon edge modes in finite size samples, as well as the robustness of the modes in the topological phase. We explore the possibility of realizing the topological phonon system in two-dimensional Wigner crystals confined in semiconductor quantum wells/heterostructure. We find that the spin-orbit coupling is too weak for driving a topological phase transition in these systems. We argue that one may look for the topological phonon system in correlated Wigner crystals with emergent effective spin-orbit coupling.

5 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Quantum Spin Hall Effect and Topological Phase Transition in HgTe Quantum Wells
• Quantum Spin Hall Insulator State in HgTe Quantum Wells
• Topological Nature of the Phonon Hall Effect
• Phase Diagram of the Low-Density Two-Dimensional Homogeneous Electron Gas
• Topological phonon modes in filamentous structures

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• A diagnosis scheme for topological degeneracies at high-symmetry momenta
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• Predicting topological materials: symmetry-based indicator theories and beyond
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• Multiple types of unconventional quasiparticles in the chiral crystal CsBe${}_2$F${}_5$
• Chiral Topological Phononic Quasiparticles in Enantiomeric Crystals SrSi${}_2$ and BaSi${}_2$
• Ferroelectrically Controlled Chirality Switching of Weyl Quasiparticles