Evidence of Metallic Wigner Crystal in Rhombohedral Graphene

TL;DR

This study provides transport evidence for both Wigner crystal and metallic Wigner crystal phases in rhombohedral graphene, revealing new correlated electronic states facilitated by band flattening and quantum geometry.

Contribution

It demonstrates the realization of metallic Wigner crystals in rhombohedral graphene, a state previously considered difficult to achieve, through gate-controlled band flattening and transport measurements.

Findings

Observation of insulating state with nonlinear, hysteretic I-V relations indicating pinned Wigner crystal.

Detection of a metallic Wigner crystal with hole-like carriers at low densities.

Collapse of both WC and mWC states with increasing temperature or bias voltage.

Abstract

When the Coulomb interaction dominates over kinetic energy, electrons can crystallize into a Wigner crystal (WC). This paradigmatic correlated electronic phase has been realized in two-dimensional electron gases with parabolic band dispersion and completely flat Landau levels under high magnetic fields. Beyond these conventional contexts of electron crystallization, more exotic electron crystals have been postulated but remain unexplored. For example, a metallic Wigner crystal (mWC), in which itinerant carriers coexist with a pinned electron lattice, has been proposed theoretically but considered difficult to realize. Non-parabolic electron bands and quantum geometry may facilitate mWC and other novel topological electron crystals. Here we report transport evidence for WC and mWC in rhombohedral tetra-, penta-, and hexalayer graphene in the charge density range 0.3-0.5x10^12 cm^-2. By flattening the conduction band with a gate-controlled displacement field D, we observe an insulating state at nonzero charge density that shows nonlinear, hysteretic current-voltage relations, signatures of a pinned WC, that are absent from the lower-density insulator. Further increasing D reveals transport dominated by hole-like carriers with density up to only 15% of the nominal electron density, consistent with mWC. This mWC state is closely tied to the WC state, as both collapse simultaneously with increasing temperature or bias voltage. The mWC state shows quantum Hall onset near 0.4 T and disobeys the Streda relation, indicating compressible charge exchange between itinerant holes and the transport-inert WC background. Our results establish rhombohedral graphene as a platform for exploring novel electron crystals, as well as possible nontrivial topology, and new collective modes.