STUDY OF STRUCTURAL STABILITY OF WIGNER ELECTRON CRYSTAL
The ground state energies of the non-magnetic Wigner electron crystals corresponding to sc, bcc, fcc, diamond and perovskite structures are estimated and it is found that the bcc lattice still remains to be the stable known arrangement for three-dimensional Wigner electron crystal. Perovskite structure is not the stablest as claimed in a previous work, it is preferred only after fcc and sc. The stability is analysed taking different structures and assuming the possibility of the Wigner electrons having cubic or spherical constant energy surface, the region of occupation in momentum space, for a whole range of rs values (rs=20 to 200). The structure dependent Wannier functions, which give a proper localized representation for the Wigner electrons in the crystals are constructed and employed in the present calculation.