Spin Polarized Ground State for Interacting Electrons in Two Dimensions

Abstract

We study numerically the ground state magnetization for clusters of interacting electrons in two dimensions in the regime where the single particle wavefunctions are localized by disorder. It is found that the Coulomb interaction leads to a spontaneous ground state magnetization. For a constant electronic density, the total spin increases linearly with the number of particles, suggesting a ferromagnetic ground state in the thermodynamic limit. The magnetization is suppressed when the single particle states become delocalized.