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Published on: September 26, 2014
Moving Wigner glasses and smectics: dynamics of disordered Wigner crystals
C Reichhardt1, C J Olson, N Grønbech-Jensen
1Department of Physics, University of California, Davis, California 95616, USA.
Abstract:
We examine the dynamics of driven classical Wigner solids interacting with quenched disorder from charged impurities. For strong disorder, the initial motion is plastic, in the form of crossing winding channels. For increasing drive, there is a reordering into a moving Wigner smectic with the electrons moving in separate 1D channels. These different dynamic phases can be related to the conduction noise and I(V) curves. For strong disorder, we show criticality in the voltage onset just above depinning. We obtain the dynamic phase diagram for driven Wigner solids and demonstrate a finite threshold of force for transverse sliding, recently observed experimentally.
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