Effective interaction potential and superfluid-solid transition of spatially indirect excitons

Using an adiabatic approximation we derive an effective interaction potentially for spatially indirect excitons. Using this potential and path integral Monte Carlo simulations we study exciton crystllization and the quantum melting phase transition in a macroscopic system of 2D excitons. Furthermore, the superfluid fraction is calculated as a function of density and shown to vanish upon crystallization. We show that the commonly used dipole model fails to correctly describe indirect excitons in quantum well structures.

On the Coulomb-dipole transition in mesoscopic classical and quantum electron-hole bilayers

We study the Coulomb-to-dipole transition which occurs when the separation $d$ of an electron-hole bilayer system is varied with respect to the characteristic in-layer distances. An analysis of the classical ground state configurations for harmonically confined clusters with $Nleq30$ reveals that the energetically most favorable state can differ from that of two-dimensional pure dipole or Coulomb systems. Performing a normal mode analysis for the N=19 cluster it is found that the lowest mode frequencies exhibit drastic changes when $d$ is varied. Furthermore, we present quantum-mechanical ground states for N=6, 10 and 12 spin-polarized electrons and holes. We compute the single-particle energies and orbitals in self-consistent Hartree-Fock approximation over a broad range of layer separations and coupling strengths between the limits of the ideal Fermi gas and the Wigner crystal.

Mesoscopic Coulomb Supersolid

When a few tens of charged particles are trapped in a spherical electrostatic potential at low temperature they form concentric shells resembling atoms. These ``artificial atoms can be easily controlled by varying the confinement strength. We analyze such systems for the case that the particles are bosons and find superfluid behavior which even persists in the solid state. This novel state of matter is a mesoscopic supersolid.

Melting of trapped few particle systems

In small confined systems predictions for the melting point strongly depend on the choice of quantity and on the way it is computed, even yielding divergent and ambiguous results. We present a very simple quantity which allows to control these problems -- the variance of the block averaged interparticle distance fluctuations.