AHARONOV-BOHM OSCILLATIONS WITH FRACTIONAL PERIOD IN A MULTICHANNEL WIGNER CRYSTAL RING

We study the persistent current in a quasi-one-dimensional ring with s trongly correlated electrons forming a multichannel Wigner crystal (WC ). The influence of the Coulomb interaction manifests itself only in t he presence of external scatterers that pin the WC. Two regimes of wea k and strong pinning are considered. For strong pinning we predict the Aharonov-Bohm oscillations with fractional period. Fractionalization is due to the interchannel coupling in the process of quantum tunnelin g of the WC. The fractional period depends on the filling of the chann els and may serve as an indicator of non-Fermi-liquid behavior of inte racting electrons in quasi-one-dimensional rings.