Mixed correlation phases in elongated quantum dots

Abstract

It is theoretically shown, within the local spin-density-functional theory framework, that inhomogeneous confining potentials in elongated, diluted N-electron quantum dots may lead to the formation of mixed phases in which some regions of the N-electron system behave like a Fermi liquid while, simultaneously, other, more dilute regions display quasiclassical Wigner crystallization. The characterization of the mixed phases in the addition energy spectrum and the infrared response is reported. An infrared sensor of electron filling is suggested.

Wigner localization in quantum dots from Kohn-Sham density functional theory without symmetry breaking

“…From the practical side, potential applications of Wignerlocalized systems include the design and manipulation of qubits and quantum computing devices, 3,[14][15][16] or the realization of infrared sensors to control the electron filling in semiconductor nanostructures. 17 Along with the fundamental and practical interest, strongly-correlated systems are well-known to pose serious challenges for the different theoretical approaches commonly used to study them. On the one hand, the configuration interaction (CI) method becomes numerically unaffordable if one wants to treat more than five or six electrons.…”

Configuration interaction approach to Fermi liquid–Wigner crystal mixed phases in semiconductor nanodumbbells

“…The lack of fine details modulating the profile of the two density peaks denotes the low level of correlation between the electrons populating each cap. 14 We may refer to this configuration as a Fermi liquid phase, i.e., a system of weakly interacting particles where the kinetic energy dominates over the Coulomb repulsion.…”

“…The overall obtained results confirm and strengthen the previous ones obtained at the LSDFT level. 14 We complete our study with the simulation of some absorption spectra. As stated in Sec.…”

“…In contrast, crystallization processes in the presence of highly inhomogeneous potentials seem to have attracted much less attention. [11][12][13] In a recent paper, 14 local spin-density functional theory (LSDFT) calculations demonstrated the existence of mixed phases (MPs) in CdSe/CdTe/CdSe NDs, driven by the inhomogeneous spatial confining potentials. In a MP the electron density behaves like a standard Fermi liquid in some regions while, simultaneously, other more dilute regions display the profile of a typical Wigner crystal.…”

A Finite Element Configuration Interaction Method For Wigner Localization

“…The Wigner localized systems have received renewed theoretically and experimentally interests, particularly for low dimensional materials such as 1D quantum wires [15,30,34,35,39,44] and 2D quantum dots [2,11,18,27,41,42,55]. Further potential applications of the Wigner localized systems include the design and manipulation of qubits and quantum computing devices [19,50,54,55], and the realization of infrared sensors for controlling the electron filling in semiconductor nano-structures [5].…”