University of Wisconsin-Madison Maps Paired Electron Crystal

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have mapped a crystalline structure formed from electrons paired with unusual characteristics, revealing a new pathway to electron crystallization. The work demonstrates that increasing Berry curvature can drive a transition into this paired Wigner crystal state. At sufficiently low electron densities, the team found a reduction of zero-point energy that can overcome the relatively small Coulomb energy cost of pairing electrons within a unit cell, suggesting a strong-coupling mechanism at play. This finding points to a basis for local spin-triplet pairing in correlated two-dimensional electron systems with quantum geometry,…