Metal-insulator transition in the Hartree-Fock phase diagram of the fully polarized homogeneous electron gas in two dimensions

Abstract: We determine numerically the ground state of the two-dimensional, fully polarized electron gas within the Hartree-Fock approximation without imposing any particular symmetries on the solutions. At low electronic densities, the Wigner crystal solution is stable, but for higher densities ($r_s$ less than $\sim 2.7$) we obtain a ground state of different symmetry: the charge density forms a triangular lattice with about 11% more sites than electrons. We prove analytically that this conducting state with broken translational symmetry has lower energy than the uniform Fermi gas state in the high density region giving rise to a metal to insulator transition.