Polarization catastrophe in the polaronic Wigner crystal

Abstract

We consider a three dimensional Wigner crystal of electrons lying in a host ionic dielectric. Owing to their interaction with the lattice polarization, each localized electron forms a polaron. We study the collective excitations of such a polaronic Wigner crystal at zero temperature, taking into account the quantum fluctuations of the polarization within the Feynman harmonic approximation. We show that, contrary to the ordinary electron crystal, the system undergoes a polarization catastrophe when the density is increased. An optical signature of this instability is derived, whose trend agrees with the experiments carried out in Nd-based cuprates.

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Polaronic features in the optical properties of the Holstein-t-J model
• Nature of the metal-nonmetal transition in metal-ammonia solutions. I. Solvated electrons at low metal concentrations
• Wigner crystallization in a polarizable medium
• Variational path-integral treatment of a translation invariant many-polaron system
• Intermolecular forces and correlations mediated by a phonon bath
• Electronic transport in AlMn(Si) and AlCuFe quasicrystals: Break-down of the semiclassical model
• Formation of polaron clusters
• Herzfeld instability versus Mott transition in metal-ammonia solutions
• Enhancement of Wigner crystallization in quasi low-dimensional solids
• Finite-temperature Wigner solid and other phases of ripplonic polarons on a helium film
• On the intrinsic pinning and shape of charge-density waves in 1D Peierls systems