Evidence of Coulomb liquid phase in few-electron droplets

Jashwanth Shaju, Elina Pavlovska, Ralfs Suba, Junliang Wang, Seddik Ouacel, Thomas Vasselon, Matteo Aluffi, Lucas Mazzella, Clément Geffroy, Arne Ludwig, Andreas D. Wieck, Matias Urdampilleta, Christopher Bäuerle, Vyacheslavs Kashcheyevs () and Hermann Sellier ()
Additional contact information
Jashwanth Shaju: Institut Néel
Elina Pavlovska: University of Latvia
Ralfs Suba: University of Latvia
Junliang Wang: Institut Néel
Seddik Ouacel: Institut Néel
Thomas Vasselon: Institut Néel
Matteo Aluffi: Institut Néel
Lucas Mazzella: Institut Néel
Clément Geffroy: Institut Néel
Arne Ludwig: Ruhr-Universität Bochum
Andreas D. Wieck: Ruhr-Universität Bochum
Matias Urdampilleta: Institut Néel
Christopher Bäuerle: Institut Néel
Vyacheslavs Kashcheyevs: University of Latvia
Hermann Sellier: Institut Néel

Nature, 2025, vol. 642, issue 8069, 928-933

Abstract: Abstract Emergence of universal collective behaviour from interactions within a sufficiently large group of elementary constituents is a fundamental scientific concept1. In physics, correlations in fluctuating microscopic observables can provide key information about collective states of matter, such as deconfined quark–gluon plasma in heavy-ion collisions2 or expanding quantum degenerate gases3,4. Mesoscopic colliders, through shot-noise measurements, have provided smoking-gun evidence on the nature of exotic electronic excitations such as fractional charges5,6, levitons7 and anyon statistics8. Yet, bridging the gap between two-particle collisions and the emergence of collectivity9 as the number of interacting particles increases10 remains a challenging task at the microscopic level. Here we demonstrate all-body correlations in the partitioning of electron droplets containing up to N = 5 electrons, driven by a moving potential well through a Y-junction in a semiconductor device. Analysing the partitioning data using high-order multivariate cumulants and finite-size scaling towards the thermodynamic limit reveals distinctive fingerprints of a strongly correlated Coulomb liquid. These fingerprints agree well with a universal limit at which the partitioning of a droplet is predicted by a single collective variable. Our electron-droplet scattering experiments illustrate how coordinated behaviour emerges through interactions of only a few elementary constituents. Studying similar signatures in other physical platforms such as cold-atom simulators4,11 or collections of anyonic excitations8,12 may help identify emergence of exotic phases and, more broadly, advance understanding of matter engineering.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-09139-z

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