Condensed Matter and Biological Physics Seminars

Investigating the Wigner solid forming at the highest magnetic fields in exceptional two-dimensional charge carriers we discovered two surprising properties. First, the current-voltage characteristic is found to exhibit a region of negative differential resistance. When our sample is biased in this negative resistance region there are spontaneous voltage oscillations developing on the sample. Second, when increasing the Coulomb interaction between the charge carriers we find that the so called reentrant Wigner solid initially strengthens then it unexpectedly starts weakening until it completely disappears. Such a behavior leads to an intricate phase diagram and we argue that it is a result of a yet unexplained quantum melting of the solid.