Nearly frozen Coulomb liquids

We show that very long-range repulsive interactions of a generalized Coulomb-like form V(R)∼R^-α, with α<d (d dimensionality), typically introduce very strong frustration, resulting in extreme fragility of the charge-ordered state. An “almost frozen” liquid then survives in a broad dynamical range above the (very low) melting temperature T_c which is proportional to α. This “pseudogap” phase is characterized by unusual insulatinglike, but very weakly temperature dependent transport, similar to experimental findings in certain low carrier density systems.