Noise at the Wigner Glass Transition

TL;DR

This paper models a transition from a Wigner liquid to a Wigner glass in 2D electron systems, showing how noise characteristics change at the transition and with temperature, aligning with experimental observations.

Contribution

It introduces a simple model capturing the Wigner glass transition and its impact on noise properties, providing theoretical insights into experimental noise measurements.

Findings

Noise power peaks at the transition point

1/f^alpha noise characteristics change across the transition

Noise decreases with increasing temperature

Abstract

Using a simple model for interacting electrons in two dimensions with random disorder, we show that a crossover from a Wigner liquid to a Wigner glass occurs as a function of charge density. The noise power increases strongly at the transition and the characteristics of the 1/f^alpha noise change. When the temperature is increased, the noise power decreases. We compare these results with recent noise measurements in systems with two-dimensional metal-insulator transitions.