Electronic Liquid Crystalline Phases in a Spin-Orbit Coupled Two-Dimensional Electron Gas

Details Electronic Liquid Crystalline Phases in a Spin-Orbit Coupled Two-Dimensional Electron Gas Electronic Liquid Crystalline Phases in a Spin-Orbit Coupled Two-Dimensional Electron Gas

2011-08-04

arxiv.org/abs/1108.1222v3

Phys. Rev. B 85, 035116 (2012)

Physics

Condensed Matter

Strongly Correlated Electrons

12 pages, 7 figures. Published version

Scientific paper

10.1103/PhysRevB.85.035116

We argue that the ground state of a two-dimensional electron gas with Rashba spin-orbit coupling realizes one of several possible liquid crystalline or Wigner crystalline phases in the low-density limit, even for short-range repulsive electron-electron interactions (which decay with distance with a power larger than 2). Depending on specifics of the interactions, preferred ground-states include an anisotropic Wigner crystal with an increasingly anisotropic unit cell as the density decreases, a striped or electron smectic phase, and a ferromagnetic phase which strongly breaks the lattice point-group symmetry, i.e. exhibits nematic order. Melting of the anisotropic Wigner crystal or the smectic phase by thermal or quantum fluctuations can gives rise to a non-magnetic nematic phase which preserves time-reversal symmetry.

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