Abstract
The interplay between strongly correlated liquid and crystal phases for two-dimensional electrons exposed to a high transverse magnetic field is of fundamental interest. Through the nonperturbative fixed-phase diffusion Monte Carlo method, we determine the phase diagram of the Wigner crystal in the plane, where is the filling factor and is the strength of Landau-level (LL) mixing. The phase boundary is seen to exhibit a striking dependence, with the states away from the magic filling factors being much more susceptible to crystallization due to Landau-level mixing than those at . Our results explain the qualitative difference between the experimental behaviors observed in - and -doped gallium arsenide quantum wells and, in particular, the existence of an insulating state for and also for in low-density -doped systems. We predict that, in the vicinity of and , increasing LL mixing causes a transition not into an ordinary electron Wigner crystal, but rather into a strongly correlated crystal of composite fermions carrying two vortices.
- Received 19 January 2018
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.116802
© 2018 American Physical Society