Magnetic Interactions of Wigner Crystal in Magnetic Field and Berry Curvature: Multi-Particle Tunneling through Complex Trajectories

Abstract: We study how a weak perpendicular magnetic field $B$ and a Berry curvature $\Omega$ modify the magnetic interactions of a two-dimensional Wigner crystal (WC), using the semi-classical large-$r_s$ expansion. When only a magnetic field is present, various ring-exchange interactions arise from electron tunneling along {\it complex} trajectories, which constitute {\it complex instanton} solutions of the coordinate-space path integral. To leading order in $B$, each ring-exchange constant acquires an Aharonov-Bohm (AB) phase equal to the magnetic flux enclosed by the real tunneling trajectory of the $B=0$ problem. This effect is directly relevant to two-dimensional electron systems with a small $g$-factor ($g \ll 1$). In the presence of a Berry curvature, multi-particle tunneling must be considered in a (complexified) phase space $({\bf r}, {\bf k})$. To leading order in $\Omega$, the exchange constants acquire the Berry phase enclosed by a {\it purely imaginary} trajectory in a momentum space. Finally, when both $B$ and $\Omega$ are non-zero, in addition to having the AB and Berry phase factors, the magnitude of the exchange constant can also be renormalized by an effective-mass correction. These effects may be relevant for the WC and its proximate phases recently observed in tetra- and penta-layer rhombohedral graphene.