Terahertz Fingerprint of Monolayer Wigner Crystals.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 35048702.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1021/acs.nanolett.1c04620 and PMC identifier 8832488.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The strong Coulomb interaction in monolayer semiconductors represents a unique opportunity for the realization of Wigner crystals without external magnetic fields. In this work, we predict that the formation of monolayer Wigner crystals can be detected by their terahertz response spectrum, which exhibits a characteristic sequence of internal optical transitions. We apply the density matrix formalism to derive the internal quantum structure and the optical conductivity of the Wigner crystal and to microscopically analyze the multipeak shape of the obtained terahertz spectrum. Moreover, we predict a characteristic shift of the peak position as a function of charge density for different atomically thin materials and show how our results can be generalized to an arbitrary two-dimensional system.