2013/01/16 by Egil V. Herland, Egor Babaev, Parsa Bonderson +4 · 7 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Charge (physics) #Component (thermodynamics) #Condensed matter physics #Coulomb #Crystal (programming language) #Electron #Ising model #Particle (ecology) #Phase (matter) #Phase diagram #Phase transition #Physics #Plasma #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #Quantum many-body systems #Quantum mechanics #Theoretical and Computational Physics #Type (biology) #Wigner crystal #cond-mat.stat-mech #cond-mat.str-el
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.87.075117
published in Physical Review B 87(7) (American Physical Society) · 8 pages, 8 figures. Submitted to Physical Review B
arxiv created 2013/01/16 · openalex publication_date 2013/02/13 · arxiv updated 2013/02/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We study an unconventional two-dimensional, two-component classical plasma on a sphere, with emphasis on detecting signatures of melting transitions. This system is relevant to Ising-type quantum Hall states, and is unconventional in the sense that it features particles interacting via two different two-dimensional Coulomb interactions. One species of particle in the plasma carries charge of both types (Q1,Q2), while the other species carries only charge of the second type (0,\ensuremath-Q2). We find signatures of a freezing transition at Q12\ensuremath≃140. This means that the species with charge of both types will form a Wigner crystal, whereas the species with charge of the second type also shows signatures of being a Wigner crystal, due to the attractive intercomponent interaction of the second type. Moreover, there is also a Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless phase transition at Q22\ensuremath≃4, at which the two species of particles bind to form molecules that are neutral with respect to the second Coulomb interaction. These two transitions appear to be independent of each other, giving a rectangular phase diagram. As a special case, Q2=0 describes the (conventional) two-dimensional one-component plasma. Our study is consistent with previous studies of this plasma, and sheds new light on the freezing transition of this system.