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Access through your institution Buy or subscribe Perhaps better known for his work on symmetries in quantum mechanics or the Manhattan Project, Eugene Wigner also made advances in solid
state physics. While at Princeton in 1934, he calculated the energy of free electrons in a metal, and noticed that when the mutual repulsion of electrons causes them to be uniformly and
sparsely distributed, the total energy of an electron gas decreases due to a change in the wavefunction. In essence, he predicted that free electrons in an electron gas form an electron
solid when the Coulomb energy considerably exceeds the kinetic energy. 90 years later, such a Wigner crystal can be seen in the scanning tunnelling microscopy images that Yen-Chen Tsui and
co-workers obtain in ultraclean bilayer graphene devices. Can a more practical system host a Wigner crystal? A superlattice with a periodic potential, as found in WSe2/WS2 moiré
heterostructures, can trap electrons akin to eggs in a carton. Indeed Hongyuan Li and co-workers imaged a generalized Wigner crystal in this system, which breaks discrete translational
symmetry. This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution ACCESS OPTIONS Access through your institution Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals Get
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checkout ADDITIONAL ACCESS OPTIONS: * Log in * Learn about institutional subscriptions * Read our FAQs * Contact customer support REFERENCES ORIGINAL ARTICLE * Wigner, E. _Phys. Rev_. 46,
1002–1101 (1934) RELATED ARTICLES * Tsui, Y.-C. et al. _Nature_ 628, 287–292 (2024) * Grimes, C. C. & Adams, G. _Phys. Rev. Lett_. 42, 795–798 (1979) * Li, H. et al. _Nature_ 597,
650–654 (2021) * Andrei, E. Y. et al. _Phys. Rev. Lett_. 60, 2765–2768 (1988) Download references AUTHOR INFORMATION AUTHORS AND AFFILIATIONS * Nature Reviews Physics
https://www.nature.com/nrpsychol/ May Chiao Authors * May Chiao View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar CORRESPONDING AUTHOR Correspondence to
May Chiao. RIGHTS AND PERMISSIONS Reprints and permissions ABOUT THIS ARTICLE CITE THIS ARTICLE Chiao, M. 90 years of the Wigner crystal. _Nat Rev Phys_ 6, 348 (2024).
https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-024-00730-3 Download citation * Published: 30 May 2024 * Issue Date: June 2024 * DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-024-00730-3 SHARE THIS ARTICLE Anyone you
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