A MECHANISM FOR QUANTUM MELTING IN 2 DIMENSIONS

We investigate a mechanism of generation of dislocations for the melting of a quantum solid in two dimensions at zero temperature. For the Wigner transition of an electron gas in a magnetic field, the Lindeman ratio is found to be 0.29 at low fields and 0.26 at high fields. In the zero field limit, r(s) = 35 at the transition, in agreement with recent quantum Monte Carlo simulations results of 37 +/- 5. In the high field limit we found that the transition filling factor is 0.19, in good agreement with the estimate 0.2 of recent experiments by Andrei et al., Willett et al. and Stormer et al.