Electrostatic Attraction of Coupled Wigner Crystals: Finite Temperature Effects

A. W. C. Lau; P. Pincus; Dov Levine; H. A. Fertig

doi:10.1103/physreve.63.051604

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arXiv · cond-mat/0006264

Electrostatic Attraction of Coupled Wigner Crystals: Finite Temperature Effects

A. W. C. Lau·P. Pincus·Dov Levine·H. A. Fertig

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Abstract

In this paper, we present a unified physical picture for the electrostatic attraction between two coupled planar Wigner crystals at finite (but below their melting) temperature. At very low temperatures, we find a new regime where the attraction, arising from the long-wavelength excitation of the plasmon mode, scales with the interplanar distance $d$ as $d^{-2}$. At higher temperatures, our calculation agrees with known results. Furthermore, we analyze the temperature dependence of the short-ranged attraction arising from ``structural'' correlations and argue that thermal fluctuations drastically reduce the strength of this attraction.

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A. W. C. Lau, P. Pincus, Dov Levine, H. A. Fertig. 2000-06-16. Electrostatic Attraction of Coupled Wigner Crystals: Finite Temperature Effects. https://doi.org/10.1103/physreve.63.051604

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