Elementary Excitations, Melting Temperature, and Correlation Energy in Wigner Crystals

Abstract

We present a fully quantum-mechanical study of the energy--momentum dispersion of running waves, spin-conserving neutral excitations, and spin-reversal neutral excitations in a spin-polarized two-dimensional Wigner crystal (WC). Our results show that the collective modes---plasmon and transverse sound---closely follow classical predictions even at surprisingly low values of $r_s\sim 8$. Furthermore, by extracting the shear modulus from the transverse sound speed, we find that quantum-mechanical effects enhance the shear modulus at high densities, leading to a (Kosterlitz--Thouless--Halperin--Nelson--Young) melting temperature that exceeds the classical prediction. In addition, we apply the quasi-boson approximation to compute the correlation energy of the 2D WC based on its neutral excitation spectrum. While this approach underestimates the absolute correlation energy compared to quantum Monte Carlo results, it successfully captures the overall trend. We further investigate the stability of the metallic Wigner crystal (MWC), a partially melted crystalline state that retains a Fermi surface, and find that it is unstable toward density fluctuations, with the instability concentrated at wave vectors set by the Fermi pocket size. These findings establish a robust quantum-mechanical foundation for understanding elementary excitations in Wigner crystals within low-dimensional electron systems and provide valuable theoretical insights for future experimental studies.

18 pages, 9 figures

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