Correlations in interacting electron liquids: Many-body statistics and hyperuniformity

TL;DR

This paper investigates how electron-electron interactions and polarization affect hyperuniformity in quantum electron liquids across different dimensions, revealing new multihyperuniform states with distinct scaling behaviors.

Contribution

It analytically characterizes the small-$k$ behavior of structure factors in interacting electron liquids, uncovering polarization-dependent hyperuniformity and multihyperuniformity phenomena.

Findings

Disordered hyperuniform states are confirmed in electron liquids.

Different polarization states exhibit distinct hyperuniform scaling exponents.

Partially polarized fermions show multihyperuniformity with enhanced hyperuniformity.

Abstract

Disordered hyperuniform many-body systems are exotic states of matter with novel optical, transport, and mechanical properties. These systems are characterized by an anomalous suppression of large-scale density fluctuations compared to typical liquids, i.e., the structure factor obeys the scaling relation $S(k)\sim \mathcal{B}k^\alpha$ with $\mathcal{B}, \alpha>0$ in the limit $k$\,$\rightarrow$\,$ 0$. Ground-state $d$-dimensional free fermionic gases, which are fundamental models for many metals and semiconductors, are key examples of \textit{quantum} disordered hyperuniform states with important connections to random matrix theory. However, the effects of electron-electron interactions as well as the polarization of the electron liquid on hyperuniformity have not been explored thus far. In this work, we systematically address these questions by deriving the analytical small-$k$ behaviors (and associatedly, $\alpha$ and $\mathcal{B}$) of the total and spin-resolved structure factors of quasi-1D, 2D, and 3D electron liquids for varying polarizations and interaction parameters. We validate that these equilibrium disordered ground states are hyperuniform, as dictated by the fluctuation-compressibility relation. Interestingly, free fermions, partially polarized interacting fermions, and fully polarized interacting fermions are characterized by different values of the small-$k$ scaling exponent $\alpha$ and coefficient $\mathcal{B}$. In particular, partially polarized fermionic liquids exhibit a unique form of \textit{multihyperuniformity}, in which the net configuration exhibits a stronger form of hyperuniformity (i.e., larger $\alpha$) than each individual spin component.