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Professor Steven Kivelson - General Colloquium
April 15, 2004
Professor Steven Kivelson
Department of Physics
University of California Los Angeles
Title: Intermediate phases of the two dimensional electron fluid between the Fermi liquid and the Wigner crystal
We show that there can be no direct first order transition between a Fermi liquid and an insulating electronic (Wigner) crystalline phase in the density-tuned phase diagram of a clean two-dimensional electron gas in a metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET); rather, there must always exist intermediate quantum phases, and an accompanying sequence of continuous phase transitions. Among the intermediate phases which we find are a variety of electronic liquid crystalline phases, including stripe-related analogues of classical smectics and nematics. The existence of these phases can be established on the basis of an asymptotic analysis in the neighborhood of the phase boundaries, and reasonable estimates can be made concerning the ranges of electron densities and device geometries in which they exist. We also mention some parallels between the intermediate electronic phases in MOSFETs and the electron fluid in strongly correlated materials.