Abstract
The highly nonlinear many-body physics of a chain of mutually interacting atoms in contact with a periodic substrate gives rise to complex static and dynamical phenomena, such as structural phase transitions and friction. In the limit of an infinite chain incommensurate with the substrate, Aubry predicted a transition with increasing substrate potential, from the chain’s intrinsic arrangement free to slide on the substrate, to a pinned arrangement favouring the substrate pattern1. So far, the Aubry transition has not been observed. Here, using spatially resolved position and friction measurements of cold trapped ions in an optical lattice2,3, we observed a finite version of the Aubry transition and the onset of its hallmark fractal atomic arrangement. Notably, the observed critical lattice depth for few-ion chains agrees well with the infinite-chain prediction. Our results elucidate the connection between competing ordering patterns and superlubricity in nanocontacts—the elementary building blocks of friction.
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Acknowledgements
We thank W. Jhe for helpful discussions. A.B. and D.G. acknowledge scholarship support from NSERC. This work was supported by the NSF.
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A.B., D.G. and V.V. designed the experiments. D.G., A.B. and I.C. collected and analysed data. All authors discussed the results and contributed to the manuscript preparation.
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Bylinskii, A., Gangloff, D., Counts, I. et al. Observation of Aubry-type transition in finite atom chains via friction. Nature Mater 15, 717–721 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat4601
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat4601
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