Structure of the Wigner crystal

A model of the Wigner crystal with two localized electrons per cell is developed. The ground state energy of this model is evaluated. The Coulomb interaction within a cell is treated exactly for a certain range of electron concentrations. The calculation demonstrates that at very low electron concentrations the crystal contains a single localized electron per cell. As the concentration is increased the crystal comes to contain two, three or more electrons per cell. At high electron concentrations the entire crystal can be treated as a single cell.Translated from Izvestiya Vysshikh Uchebnykh Zavedenii, Fizika, No. 6, pp 47–51, June, 1988.