A New Close-Up View of Electrons Inside Semiconductors

The experimental image on the left is a scanning tunnelling microscope image of the research team’s 2D semiconductor device. The distinct elliptical, bright orange regions are electrons in the Wigner solid state while the more elongated structures in the lower right are electrons beginning to “melt” into a Fermi liquid state. The clusters of tiny red circles in the black regions indicate the locations of defects. The theoretical image on the right is a Quantum Monte Carlo simulation that shows nearly identical features as the experimental image. The close agreement between the two images helps confirm that the experimental images are showing genuine electron behavior rather than artifacts of the microscope, while also validating the accuracy of the simulation technique.