Thermopower evidence for Wigner crystallization in the insulating phase of two-dimensional GaAs bilayer hole systems

We report on low-temperature thermopower measurements of interacting GaAs bilayer hole systems in the limit of no interlayer tunneling. These systems exhibit a reentrant insulating phase near the many-body quantum Hall state (QHS) at total filling factor ν = 1, when both layers have the same density. The diffusion thermopower is expected to diverge as T^{- 1} in the presence of an energy gap (Wigner crystal) or to vanish in the case of a disordered induced mobility gap. Our results show that, as the temperature is decreased, the diffusion thermopower exhibits a T^{- 1} dependence in the insulating phase around ν = 1. This behavior clearly indicates the opening of an energy gap at low temperature, in agreement with the formation of a pinned Wigner solid. Finally, we report on the T-dependence of the thermopower at ν = 1.