Paper detail

Separation of Wigner structures for 2D equimolar binary mixtures of Coulomb particles

We study the lowest energy configurations of an equimolar binary mixture of classical pointlike particles with charges $Q_1$ and $Q_2$, such that $q=Q_2/Q_1\in [0,1]$. The particles interact pairwisely via 3D Coulomb potential and are confined to a 2D plane with a homogeneous neutralizing background charge density. In a recent paper by M. Antlanger and G. Kahl [Cond. Mat. Phys. {\bf 16}, 43501 (2013)], using numerical computations based on evolutionary algorithm, six fully mixed structures were identified for $0\le q\lesssim 0.59$, while the separation of $Q_1$ and $Q_2$ pure hexagonal phases minimizes the energy for $0.59\lesssim q<1$. Here, we introduce a novel structure which consists in the separation of two phases, the pure hexagonal one formed by a fraction of particles with the larger charge $Q_1$ and the other fixed one containing different numbers of $Q_1$ and $Q_2$ charges. Using an analytic method based on an expansion of the interaction energy in Misra functions we show that this novel structure provides the lowest energy in two intervals of $q$ values, $0<q\lesssim 0.04707$ and $0.58895\lesssim q\lesssim 0.61367$. This fact might inspire numerical methods, for both Coulomb and Yukawa interactions, to test more general separations which go beyond the separation of two pure phases.