Terahertz Fingerprint of Monolayer Wigner Crystals
Journal article, 2022

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.

Wigner crystal

transition metal dichalcogenides

2D materials

Terahertz spectroscopy

density matrix theory

Author

Samuel Brem

Philipps University Marburg

Ermin Malic

Philipps University Marburg

Chalmers, Physics, Condensed Matter and Materials Theory

Nano Letters

1530-6984 (ISSN) 1530-6992 (eISSN)

Vol. 22 3 1311-1315

Subject Categories

Atom and Molecular Physics and Optics

Other Physics Topics

Condensed Matter Physics

DOI

10.1021/acs.nanolett.1c04620

PubMed

35048702

More information

Latest update

6/13/2022