Wigner crystallization in Bernal bilayer graphene
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In Bernal bilayer graphene (BBG), a perpendicular displacement field flattens the bottom of the conduction band and thereby facilitates the formation of strongly correlated electron states at low electron density. Here, we focus on the Wigner crystal (WC) state, which appears in a certain regime of sufficiently large displacement field, low electron density, and low temperature. We first consider a model of BBG without trigonal warping, and we show theoretically that Berry curvature leads to a new kind of WC state in which the electrons acquire a spontaneous orbital magnetization when the displacement field exceeds a critical value. We then consider the effects of trigonal warping in BBG, and we show that they lead to an unusual ``doubly re-entrant" behavior of the WC phase as a function of density. The rotational symmetry breaking associated with trigonal warping leads to a nontrivial ``minivalley order" in the WC state, which changes abruptly at a critical value of displacement field. In both cases, we estimate the phase boundary of the WC state in terms of density, displacement field, and temperature. This paper is complementary to our recent work [Joy et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 256502 (2025)].
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Cited by 2 Pith papers
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