A quantum theory of the nearly frozen charge glass

Abstract

We study long-range interacting electrons on the triangular lattice using mixed quantum/classical simulations going beyond the usual classical descriptions of the lattice Coulomb fluid. Our results in the strong interaction limit indicate that the proliferation of quantum defects governs the low-temperature dynamics of this strongly frustrated system. The present theoretical findings explain the phenomenology observed in the $\theta$-ET$_2$X materials as they fall out of equilibrium, including glassiness, resistive switching and a strong sensitivity to the electronic structure anisotropy. The method devised here can be easily generalized to address other systems and devices where itinerant and correlation-localized degrees of freedom are intertwined on short lengthscales.