Wigner crystal

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Wigner crystal

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After Hungarian-American physicist, Eugene Wigner, who predicted the crystalline state in 1934.

Wigner crystal (plural Wigner crystals)

1. (condensed matter physics) A solid, crystalline phase of ions or charged particles (originally, and especially electrons) in a uniform, inert neutralising background, such that said ions have insufficient momentum to overcome their mutual repulsion and so remain fixed in a lattice formation.

   Synonym: electron crystal

   • 2012, Janusz Jacak, Ryszard Gonczarek, Lucjan Jacak, Ireneus Jóźwiak, Application of Braid Groups in 2D Hall System Physics, World Scientific, page 46:

     The Wigner crystal, or the electron crystal [Wigner (1934)], corresponds to the crystallization of the electron liquid, where the size of the packet that corresponds to the particle localization is smaller than the average distance between particles.

   • 2013, Yehuda B. Band, Yshai Avishai, Quantum Mechanics with Applications to Nanotechnology and Information Science, Elsevier (Academic Press), page 816,

     3D Wigner crystals have not been observed experimentally. In addition to the difficulties in achieving low density, a Wigner crystal, once created, is not stable against various perturbations.

   • 2015, Wolfgang Demtröder, Laser Spectroscopy 2: Experimental Techniques, Springer, 5th Edition, page 531,

     If several ions are trapped in an ion trap and are cooled by optical sideband cooling, a "phase transition" may occur at the temperature ${\displaystyle T_{C}}$ where the ions arrange into a stable, spatially symmetric configuration like a crystal . The distances between these ions in this Wigner crystal are about ${\displaystyle 10^{3}-10^{4}}$ times larger than those in an ordinary ion crystal such as ${\displaystyle {\ce {NaCl}}}$. Wigner crystals of electrons, where the electrons are located at certain regular positions in an external field, were first proposed by E. Wigner in 1934.