Determination of the interactions in confined macroscopic Wigner islands: theory and experiments

TL;DR

This paper investigates the interactions within macroscopic Wigner islands, combining theoretical modeling and experiments to reveal that their interactions resemble those between vortices in type-II superconductors, with controllable characteristics.

Contribution

It provides a combined theoretical and experimental analysis of interactions in macroscopic Wigner islands, showing they follow a decaying exponential and Bessel function, similar to vortex interactions in superconductors.

Findings

Interaction energy approximated by exponential decay and Bessel function

Interactions are similar to those between vortices in type-II superconductors

Interactions are easily controllable in the system

Abstract

Macroscopic Wigner islands present an interesting complementary approach to explore the properties of two-dimensional confined particles systems. In this work, we characterize theoretically and experimentally the interaction between their basic components, viz., conducting spheres lying on the bottom electrode of a plane condenser. We show that the interaction energy can be approximately described by a decaying exponential as well as by a modified Bessel function of the second kind. In particular, this implies that the interactions in this system, whose characteristics are easily controllable, are the same as those between vortices in type-II superconductors.