Charge Density Waves in a Quantum Plasma

Abstract

We analyze the instability of an unpolarized uniform quantum plasma consisting of two oppositely charged fermionic components with varying mass ratios, against charge and spin density waves (CDWs and SDWs). Using density functional theory, we treat each component with the local spin density approximation and a rescaled exchange-correlation functional. Interactions between different components are treated with a mean-field approximation. In both two- and three-dimensions, we find leading unstable CDW modes in the second-order expansion of the energy functional, which would induce the transition to quantum liquid crystals. The transition point and the length of the wave-vector are computed numerically. Discontinuous ranges of the wave-vector are found for different mass ratios between the two components, indicating exotic quantum phase transitions. Phase diagrams are obtained and a scaling relation is proposed to generalize the results to two-component fermionic plasmas with any mass scale. We discuss the implications of our results and directions for further improvement in treating quantum plasmas.

arXiv comment8 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (21)

• Correlation energy and spin polarization in the 2D electron gas
• Jastrow correlation factor for atoms, molecules, and solids
• Zero Temperature Phases of the Electron Gas
• Phase Diagram of the Low-Density Two-Dimensional Homogeneous Electron Gas
• Path Integral Monte Carlo Simulation of the Low-Density Hydrogen Plasma
• Spin Polarization of the Low Density 3D Electron Gas
• Crystallization in two-component Coulomb systems
• Quantum Monte Carlo study of the three-dimensional spin-polarized homogeneous electron gas
• Quantum simulation of low-temperature metallic liquid hydrogen
• Equation of state of metallic hydrogen from Coupled Electron-Ion Monte Carlo simulations
• Hexatic and mesoscopic phases in the 2D quantum Coulomb system
• Unrestricted Hartree-Fock theory of Wigner crystals
• Hybrid phase at the quantum melting of the Wigner crystal
• The Hartree-Fock ground state of the three-dimensional electron gas
• Anatomy of the quantum melting of the two dimensional Wigner crystal
• Many-body computations by stochastic sampling in Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov space
• The Hartree-Fock phase diagram of the two-dimensional electron gas
• Hartree-Fock Ground State Phase Diagram of Jellium
• Properties of Hartree-Fock solutions of the three-dimensional electron gas
• Path Integral Monte Carlo Simulations for Fermion Systems: Pairing in the Electron-Hole Plasma
• Exchange-correlation energy of a multicomponent two-dimensional electron gas