Local noise spectroscopy of Wigner crystals in two-dimensional materials

TL;DR

This paper introduces a local noise spectroscopy technique to noninvasively study Wigner crystal phases in two-dimensional materials, enabling detailed insights into their structure and excitations.

Contribution

It proposes a novel local electromagnetic noise spectroscopy method for analyzing Wigner crystals, providing high-resolution imaging and phonon information.

Findings

Single-site resolution possible at close probe distances

Noise spectroscopy reveals phonon dispersion and disorder effects

Potential to study melting transition phenomena

Abstract

We propose to use local electromagnetic noise spectroscopy as a versatile and noninvasive tool to study Wigner crystal phases of strongly-interacting two-dimensional electronic systems. In-plane imaging of the local noise is predicted to enable single-site resolution of the electron crystal when the sample-probe distance is less than the inter-electron separation. At larger sample-probe distances, noise spectroscopy encodes information about the low-energy Wigner crystal phonons, including the dispersion of the transverse shear mode, the pinning resonance due to disorder, and optical modes emerging, for instance, in bilayer crystals. We discuss the potential utility of local noise probes in analyzing the rich set of phenomena expected to occur in the vicinity of the melting transition.