We study theoretically the magnetoresistance oscillations near a half-filled lowest Landau level ($ν= 1/2$) that result from the presence of a periodic one-dimensional electrostatic potential. We use the Dirac composite fermion theory of Son [Phys. Rev. X 5 031027 (2015)], where the $ν=1/2$ state is described by a $(2+1)$-dimensional theory of quantum electrodynamics. We extend previous work that studied these oscillations in the mean-field limit by considering the effects of gauge field fluctuations within a large flavor approximation. A self-consistent analysis of the resulting Schwinger--Dyson equations suggests that fluctuations dynamically generate a Chern-Simons term for the gauge field and a magnetic field-dependent mass for the Dirac composite fermions away from $ν=1/2$. We show how this mass results in a shift of the locations of the oscillation minima that improves the comparison with experiment [Kamburov et. al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 196801 (2014)]. The temperature-dependent amplitude of these oscillations may enable an alternative way to measure this mass. This amplitude may also help distinguish the Dirac and Halperin, Lee, and Read composite fermion theories of the half-filled Landau level.
We observed slow relaxation of magnetoresistance in quantum well structures GaAs-AlGaAs with a selective doping of both wells and barrier regions which allowed partial filling of the upper Hubbard band. Such a behavior is explained as related to magnetic-field driven redistribution of the carriers between sites with different occupation numbers due to spin correlation on the doubly occupied centers. This redistribution, in its turn, leads to slow multi-particle relaxations in the Coulomb glass formed by the charged centers.
We study the dynamics of the half-filled zeroth Landau level of Dirac fermions using mirror symmetry, a supersymmetric duality between certain pairs of $2+1$-dimensional theories. We show that the half-filled zeroth Landau level of a pair of Dirac fermions is dual to a pair of Fermi surfaces of electrically-neutral composite fermions, coupled to an emergent gauge field. Thus, we use supersymmetry to provide a derivation of flux attachment and the emergent Fermi liquid-like state for the lowest Landau level of Dirac fermions. We find that in the dual theory the Coulomb interaction induces a dyn…
We provide an effective description of a particle-hole symmetric state of electrons in a half-filled Landau level, starting from the traditional approach pioneered by Halperin, Lee and Read. Specifically, we study a system consisting of alternating quasi-one-dimensional strips of composite Fermi liquid (CFL) and composite hole liquid (CHL), both of which break particle-hole symmetry. When the CFL and CHL strips are identical in size, the resulting state is manifestly invariant under the combined action of a particle-hole transformation with respect to a single Landau level (which interchanges …
Magnetoresistance in the spin-density wave (SDW) state of (TMTSF)2PF6 is known to exhibit a rich variety of the angular dependencies when a magnetic field B is rotated in the b'-c*, a-b' and a-c* planes. In the presence of a magnetic field the quasiparticle spectrum in the SDW with imperfect nesting is quantized. In such a case the minimum quasiparticle energy depends both on the magnetic field strength |B| and the angle θbetween the field and the crystal direction a, b' or c*. This approach describes rather satisfactory the magnetoresistance above T*~4K.
We report on exact-diagonalization studies of correlated many-electron states in the half-filled Landau levels of graphene, including pseudospin (valley) degeneracy. We demonstrate that the polarized Fermi sea of non-interacting composite fermions remains stable against a pairing transition in the lowest two Landau levels. However, it undergoes spontaneous depolarization, which is unprotected owing to the lack of single-particle pseudospin splitting. These results suggest the absence of the Pfaffian phase in graphene.
For interacting 2D electrons in the presence of magnetic field at half filling, the system forms a `composite Fermi liquid(CFL)' with emergent Fermi surface and exhibits metallic behavior, based on the standard Halperin, Lee, and Read(HLR) field theory. Recently, Son introduces a composite Dirac theory as the low energy effective description of Half-filled Landau Level. Such theory exhibits particle-hole symmetry and the underlying composite Fermi surface displays a robust $π$ Berry phase. In this paper, we start from the bilayer Half-filled Landau Level system where the two composite Fermi su…
The transresistance (i.e. the voltage induced in one layer by a current in another) between composite fermions in double-layers of half-filled Landau levels is shown to be dominated by scattering due to singular gauge field fluctuations arising from the antisymmetric combination of density fluctuations in two layers. The drag rate is found to be proportional to $T^{4/3}$ for $T$ less than an energy scale $Ω_{cr}$ which depends on the spacing, $d$, between the layers. An observation of a $T^{4/3}$ temperature dependence in the transresistance would be a strong evidence for the existence of the …
We develop a vortex metal theory for partial filled Landau Level at $ν=\frac{1}{2n}$, whose ground state contains a composite Fermi surface(FS) formed by the vortex of electrons. In the projected Landau Level limit, the composite Fermi surface contains $\frac{-π}{n}$ Berry phase. Such fractional Berry phase is a consequence of LL projection which produces the GMP guiding center algebra and embellishes an anomalous velocity to the equation of motion for the vortex metal. Further, we investigate a particle-hole symmetric bilayer system with $ν_1=\frac{1}{2n}$ and $ν_2=1-\frac{1}{2n}$ at each lay…
We present a theory of spontaneous Fermi surface deformations for half-filled Landau levels (filling factors of the form $ν=2n+1/2$). We assume the half-filled level to be in a compressible, Fermi liquid state with a circular Fermi surface. The Landau level projection is incorporated via a modified effective electron-electron interaction and the resulting band structure is described within the Hartree-Fock approximation. We regulate the infrared divergences in the theory and probe the intrinsic tendency of the Fermi surface to deform through Pomeranchuk instabilities. We find that the correspo…
We compare the energies of different electron solids, such as bubble crystals with triangular and square symmetry and stripe phases, to those of correlated quantum liquids in partially filled intermediate Landau levels. Multiple transitions between these phases when varying the filling of the top-most partially filled Landau level explain the observed reentrance of the integer quantum Hall effect. The phase transitions are identified as first-order. This leads to a variety of measurable phenomena such as the phase coexistence between a Wigner crystal and a two-electron bubble phase in a Landau…
We present the quantum-mechanical calculations of the angular dependence of interlayer conductivity $σ_{zz}(θ)$ in a tilted magnetic field in quasi-2D layered metals. Our calculation shows that the LL shape is important for this angular dependence. In particular, the amplitude of angular magnetoresistance oscillations (AMRO) is much stronger for the Gaussian LL shape than for the Lorentzian. The ratio $σ_{zz}(θ=0)/ σ_{zz}(θ->\pm 90^{\circ})$ is also several times larger for the Gaussian LL shape. AMRO and Zeeman energy splitting lead to a spin current. For typical organic metals and for a medi…
We discuss monolayer and bilayer quantum Hall systems in which each layer is a half-filled Landau level (LL) system. In the mean field approximation of the Son's formalism there is a common pairing structure that underlines the possibilities for paired ground states in both systems. We argue that the particle-hole (PH) Pfaffian state in the (particle-hole symmetric) half-filled LL of a monolayer, and analogous state in the PH symmetric bilayer (in which each layer is half-filled LL) can be considered as {\em critical states} i.e. states that cannot describe a phase under PH symmetry. We point …
The fractional quantum Hall state at Landau level (LL) filling factor 5/2 is extremely interesting because it is likely the first non-Abelian state, but its precise nature remains unclear after decades of study. We demonstrate this can be resolved by studying the chirality of its graviton excitations, using circularly polarized Raman scattering. We discuss the advantage of this bulk probe over the existing edge probes.
The quantum Hall phase diagram of the half-filled bilayer system in the second Landau level is studied as a function of tunneling and layer separation using exact diagonalization. We make the striking prediction that bilayer structures would manifest two distinct branches of incompressible fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE) corresponding to the Abelian 331 state (at moderate to low tunneling and large layer separation) and the non-Abelian Pfaffian state (at large tunneling and small layer separation). The observation of these two FQHE branches and the quantum phase transition between them w…
We consider a non-Abelian candidate state at filling factor $ν=3/7$ state belonging to the parton family. We find that, in the second Landau level of GaAs (i.e. at filling factor $ν=2+3/7$), this state is energetically superior to the standard Jain composite-fermion state and also provides a very good representation of the ground state found in exact diagonalization studies of finite systems. This leads us to predict that \emph{if} a fractional quantum Hall effect is observed at $ν=3/7$ in the second Landau level, it is likely to be described by this new non-Abelian state. We enumerate experim…
There exists a widely believed opinion, that the many-body ground state of a two-dimensional electron system at a completely filled lowest Landau level (the filling factor $ν=1$) is described by the so-called Hartree-Fock wave function, and that this solution is the unique, exact eigenstate of the system at $ν=1$. I show that this opinion is erroneous, construct an infinite number of other variational many-body wave functions, and discuss the properties of a few states which have the energy substantially lower than the energy of the Hartree-Fock state.
An effective field theory of composite Dirac fermions was proposed by Son [Phys. Rev. X 5, 031027 (2015)] as a theory of the half-filled Landau level with explicit particle-hole symmetry. We compute the electromagnetic response of this Son-Dirac theory on the level of the random phase approximation (RPA), where we pay particular attention to the effect of an additional composite-fermion dipole term that is needed to restore Galilean invariance. We find that once this dipole correction is taken into account, spurious interband transitions and collective modes that are present in the response of…
We describe an experimental technique to measure the chemical potential, $μ$, in atomically thin layered materials with high sensitivity and in the static limit. We apply the technique to a high quality graphene monolayer to map out the evolution of $μ$ with carrier density throughout the N=0 and N=1 Landau levels at high magnetic field. By integrating $μ$ over filling factor, $ν$, we obtain the ground state energy per particle, which can be directly compared with numerical calculations. In the N=0 Landau level, our data show exceptional agreement with numerical calculations over the whole Lan…
We report the observation of novel magnetoresistance oscillations induced by the resonant inter-subband absorption in nondegenerate 2D electrons bound to the surface of liquid helium. The oscillations are periodic in 1/B and originate from the scattering-mediated transitions of the excited electrons into the Landau states of the first subband. The structure of the oscillations is affected by the collision broadening of the Landau levels and by many-electron effects.
We study the effects of disorder on the quantum Hall stripe phases in half-filled high Landau levels using exact numerical diagonalization. We show that, in the presence of weak disorder, a compressible, striped charge density wave, becomes the true ground state. The projected electron density profile resembles that of a smectic liquid. With increasing disorder strength W, we find that there exists a critical value, W_c \sim 0.12 e^2/εl, where a transition/crossover to an isotropic phase with strong local electron density fluctuations takes place. The many-body density of states are qualitativ…
A recent proposal argues that an alternate description of the half-filled Landau level is a theory of massless Dirac fermions. We examine the possibility of pairing of these Dirac fermions by numerically solving the {\em coupled} Eliashberg equations unlike our previous calculation [Wang and Chakravarty, Phys. Rev. B {\bf 94}, 165138 (2016)]. In addition, vertex corrections are calculated to be zero from the Ward identity. We find that pairing is possible in non-zero angular momentum channels; the only differences are minor numerical shifts. As before, the pairing leads to the gapped Pfaffian …
We consider the two lowest Landau levels at half filling. In the higher Landau level (nu =5/2), we find a first order phase transition separating a compressible striped phase from a paired quantum Hall state, which is identified as the Moore-Read state. The critical point is very near the Coulomb potential and the transition can be driven by increasing the width of the electron layer. We find a much weaker transition (either second order or a crossover) from pairing to the composite fermion Fermi liquid behavior. A very similar picture is obtained for the lowest Landau level but the transition…
It is well known that there is a particle-hole symmetry for spin-polarized electrons with two-body interactions in a partially filled Landau level, which becomes exact in the limit where the cyclotron energy is large compared to the interaction strength, so one can ignore mixing between Landau levels. This symmetry is explicit in the description of a half-filled Landau level recently introduced by D. T. Son, using Dirac fermions, but it was thought to be absent in the older fermion-Chern- Simons approach, developed by Halperin, Lee, and Read and subsequent authors. We show here, however, that …
We examine the quantum phase diagram of the fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE) in the lowest two Landau levels in half-filled bilayer structures as a function of tunneling strength and layer separation, i.e., we revisit the lowest Landau level filling factor 1/2 bilayer problem and make new predictions involving bilayers in the half-filled second Landau level (i.e., filling factor 5/2). Using numerical exact diagonalization we investigate the important question of whether this system supports a FQHE described by the non-Abelian Moore-Read Pfaffian state in the strong tunneling regime. In th…
We study the interplay of particle-hole symmetry and fermion-vortex duality in multicomponent half-filled Landau levels, such as quantum Hall gallium arsenide bilayers and graphene. For the $ν{=}1/2{+}1/2$ bilayer, we show that particle-hole-symmetric interlayer Cooper pairing of composite fermions leads to precisely the same phase as the electron exciton condensate realized in experiments. This equivalence is easily understood by applying the recent Dirac fermion formulation of $ν{=}1/2$ to two components. It can also be described by Halperin-Lee-Read composite fermions undergoing interlayer …
In this work, we argue that an anisotropic interaction potential may stabilize anisotropic liquid phases of electrons even in a strong magnetic field regime where normally one expects to see only isotropic quantum Hall or isotropic Fermi liquid states. We use this approach to support a theoretical framework that envisions the possibility of an anisotropic liquid crystalline state of electrons in the lowest Landau level. In particular, we argue that an anisotropic liquid state of electrons may stabilize in the lowest Landau level close to the liquid-solid transition region at filling factor $ν=…
We construct model wavefunctions for the half-filled Landau level parameterized by "composite fermion occupation-number configurations" in a two-dimensional momentum space which correspond to a Fermi sea with particle-hole excitations. When these correspond to a weakly-excited Fermi sea, they have large overlap with wavefunctions obtained by exact diagonalization of lowest-Landau-level electrons interacting with a Coulomb interaction, allowing exact states to be identified with quasiparticle configurations. We then formulate a many-body version of the single-particle Berry phase for adiabatic …
We report on numerical study of the Dirac fermions in partially filled N=3 Landau level (LL) in graphene. At half-filling, the equal-time density-density correlation function displays sharp peaks at nonzero wavevectors $\pm {\bf q^{*}}$. Finite-size scaling shows that the peak value grows with electron number and diverges in the thermodynamic limit, which suggests an instability toward a charge density wave. A symmetry broken stripe phase is formed at large system size limit, which is robust against purturbation from disorder scattering. Such a quantum phase is experimentally observable throug…
Coulomb drag between two parallel two dimensional electron gases has been measured at high magnetic fields in samples with two different layer spacings. As the layer filling factor deviates from nu=1/2, we find that the magnitude of the drag is enhanced quadratically with Delta nu = nu - 1/2, and the curvature of the enhancement is insensitive to both the sign of Delta nu and the spacing between the layers. Our results suggest that the enhancement is not due to non-perturbative interlayer correlations.
We investigate theoretically the fractional quantum Hall effect at half-filling in the lowest Landau level observed in asymmetric wide quantum wells. The asymmetry can be achieved by a potential bias applied between the two sides of the well. Within exact-diagonalization calculations in the spherical geometry, we find that the incompressible state is described in terms of a two-component wave function. Its overlap with the ground state can be optimized with the help of a rotation in the space of the pseudospin, which mimics the lowest two electronic subbands.
We examine the quantum phase diagram of the fractional quantum Hall effect in the lowest Landau level in half-filled bilayer structures as a function of tunneling strength and layer separation. Using numerical exact diagonalization we investigate the important question of whether this system supports a fractional quantum Hall effect described by the non-Abelian Moore-Read Pfaffian state in the strong tunneling regime. We find that, although it is in principle possible, it is unlikely that the non-Abelian FQHE exists in the lowest Landau level. We establish that all so far observed FQHE states …
In a recent proposal of the half-filled Landau level, the composite fermions are taken to be Dirac particles and particle-hole symmetric. Cooper pairing of these composite fermions in different angular momentum channels, $\ell$, can give rise to different kinds of Pfaffian states. In addition to the well known Moore-Read Pfaffian and anti-Pfaffian states, a new putative particle-hole symmetric Pfaffian state, corresponding to the $s-$wave pairing channel, was also proposed. However, the possible underlying pairing mechanism is not clear at all. In this work we provide a specific pairing mechan…
Particle-hole symmetry in the lowest Landau level of the two-dimensional electron gas requires the electrical Hall conductivity to equal $\pm e^2/2h$ at half-filling. We study the consequences of weakly broken particle-hole symmetry for magnetoresistance oscillations about half-filling in the presence of an applied periodic one-dimensional electrostatic potential using the Dirac composite fermion theory proposed by Son. At fixed electron density, the oscillation minima are asymmetrically biased towards higher magnetic fields, while at fixed magnetic field, the oscillations occur symmetrically …
Half-filled Landau levels host an emergent Fermi-liquid which displays an instability towards pairing, culminating in a gapped even-denominator fractional quantum Hall ground state. While this pairing may be probed by tuning the polarization of carriers in competing orbital and spin degrees of freedom, sufficiently high quality platforms offering such tunability remain few. Here we explore the ground states at filling factor $ν$ = 5/2 in ZnO-based two-dimensional electron systems through a forced intersection of opposing spin branches of Landau levels taking quantum numbers $N$ = 1 and 0. We r…
We investigate broken rotational symmetry (BRS) states at half-filling of the valence Landau level (LL). We generalize Rezayi-Read's (RR) composite fermion (CF) trial wavefunctions to include anisotropic coupling of the flux quanta to electrons, thus generating a nematic order in the underlying CF liquid. Using the Fermi hypernetted-chain (FHNC) method which readily gives results in the thermodynamic limit, we determine in detail the properties of these states. By using the anisotropic pair distribution and static structure functions we determine the correlation energy and find that, as expect…
We explore a method for regulating 2+1D quantum critical points in which the ultra-violet cutoff is provided by the finite density of states of particles in a magnetic field, rather than by a lattice. Such Landau level quantization allows for numerical computations on arbitrary manifolds, like spheres, without introducing lattice defects. In particular, when half-filling a Landau level with $N=4$ electron flavors, with appropriate interaction anisotropies in flavor space, we obtain a fully continuum regularization of the O(5) non-linear sigma-model with a topological term, which has been conje…
We study the $ν=1/2$ Chern-Simons system and consider a self-consistent field theory of the Singwi-Sjölander type which goes beyond the random phase approximation (RPA). By considering the Heisenberg equation of motion for the longitudinal momentum operator, we are able to show that the zero-frequency density-density response function vanishes linearly in long wavelength limit independent of any approximation. From this analysis, we derive a consistency condition for a decoupling of the equal time density-density and density-momentum correlation functions. By using the Heisenberg equation of m…
We synthesize and partly review recent developments relating the physics of the half-filled Landau level in two dimensions to correlated surface states of topological insulators in three dimensions. The latter are in turn related to the physics of certain three dimensional quantum spin liquid states. The resulting insights provide an interesting answer to the old question of how particle-hole symmetry is realized in composite fermion liquids. Specifically the metallic state at filling $ν= \frac{1}{2}$ - described originally in pioneering work by Halperin , Lee, and Read as a liquid of composit…
Pairing of composite fermions in half-filled Landau level state is reexamined by solving the BCS gap equation with full frequency dependent current-current interactions. Our results show that there can be a \emph{continuous} transition from the Halperin-Lee-Read state to a chiral odd angular momentum Cooper pair state for short-range contact interaction. This is at odds with the previously established conclusion of first order pairing transition, in which the low frequency effective interaction was assumed for the entire frequency range. We find that even if the low frequency effective interac…
We investigate broken rotational symmetry (BRS) states for the fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE) at 1/3-filling of the valence Landau level (LL). Recent Monte Carlo calculations by Musaelian and Joynt [J. Phys.: Condens.\ Matter {\bf 8}, L105 (1996)] suggest that Laughlin's state becomes unstable to a BRS state for some critical finite thickness value. We study in detail the properties of such state by performing a hypernetted-chain calculation that gives results in the thermodynamic limit, complementing other methods which are limited to a finite number of particles. Our results indicate …
We have measured the diagonal conductivity in the microwave regime of an ultrahigh mobility two dimensional electron system. We find a sharp resonance in Re[sigma_{xx}] versus frequency when nu > 4 and the partial filling of the highest Landau level, nu^*, is ~ 1/4 or 3/4 and temperatures < 0.1 K. The resonance appears for a range of nu^* from 0.20 to 0.37 and again from 0.62 to 0.82. the peak frequency, f_{pk} changes from ~ 500 to ~ 150 as nu^* = 1/2 is approached. This range of f_{pk} shows no dependence on nu where the resonance is observed. The quality factor, Q, of the resonance is maxim…
One of the most spectacular experimental findings in the fractional quantum Hall effect is evidence for an emergent Fermi surface when the electron density is nearly half the density of magnetic flux quanta ($ν= 1/2$). The seminal work of Halperin, Lee, and Read (HLR) first predicted that at $ν= 1/2$ composite fermions--bound states of an electron and a pair of vortices--experience zero net magnetic field and can form a "composite Fermi liquid" with an emergent Fermi surface. In this paper we use infinite cylinder DMRG to provide compelling numerical evidence for the existence of a Fermi sea o…
We consider the Hall conductivity of composite fermions in the theory of Halperin, Lee, and Read (HLR). We present a fully quantum mechanical numerical calculation that shows, under suitable conditions, the HLR theory exhibits a particle-hole symmetric dc electrical Hall response in the presence of quenched disorder. Remarkably, this response of the HLR theory remains robust even when the disorder range is of the order of the Fermi wavelength. We find that deviations from particle-hole symmetric response can appear in the ac Hall conductivity at frequencies sufficiently large compared to the i…
We study the effects of temperature and magnetic field on a two-orbital Hubbard model within dynamical mean field theory. We focus on the quarter filled system, which is a special point in the phase diagram due to orbital degeneracy. At this particular filling the model exhibits two different long-range order mechanisms, namely orbital order and ferromagnetism. Both can cooperate but do not rely on each other's presence, creating a rich phase diagram. Particularly, in the vicinity of the phase transition to an orbitally ordered ferromagnetic state, we observe a strong magnetoresistance effect.…
For high-mobility two-dimensional electrons at a GaAs/AlGaAs heterojunction, we have studied, both experimentally and theoretically, the recently discovered giant magnetoresistance oscillations with nearly zero resistance in the oscillation minima which appear under microwave radiation. We have proposed a model based on nonequilibrium occupation of Landau levels caused by radiation which describes the oscillation picture.
We present a theory of the isotropic-nematic quantum phase transition in the composite Fermi liquid arising in half-filled Landau levels. We show that the quantum phase transition between the isotropic and the nematic phase is triggered by an attractive quadrupolar interaction between electrons, as in the case of conventional Fermi liquids. We derive the theory of the nematic state and of the phase transition. This theory is based on the flux attachment procedure which maps an electron liquid in half-filled Landau levels into the composite Fermi liquid close to a nematic transition. We show th…
Due to its extremely rich phase diagram, the two-dimensional electron gas exposed to perpendicular magnetic field has been the subject of intense and sustained study. One particularly interesting problem in this system is that of the half-filled Landau level, where the Fermi sea of composite fermions, a fractional quantum Hall state arising from a pairing instability of the composite fermions, and the quantum Hall nematic were observed in the half-filled $N=0$, $N=1$, and $N \geq 2$ Landau levels, respectively. Thus different ground states developed in different half-filled Landau levels. This…
The fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE) observed at half filling of the second Landau level is believed to be caused by a pairing of composite fermions captured by the Moore-Read Pfaffian wave function. The generating Hamiltonian for the Moore-Read Pfaffian is a purely three-body model that breaks particle-hole symmetry and lacks other properties, such as dominate two-body repulsive interactions, expected from a physical model of the FQHE. We use exact diagonalization to study the low energy states of a more physical two-body generator model derived from the three-body model. We find that th…
The half filled Landau level is expected to be approximately particle-hole symmetric, which requires an extension of the Halperin-Lee-Read (HLR) theory of the compressible state observed at this filling. Recent work indicates that, when particle-hole symmetry is preserved, the composite Fermions experience a quantized $π$-Berry phase upon winding around the composite Fermi-surface, analogous to Dirac fermions at the surface of a 3D topological insulator. In contrast, the effective low energy theory of the composite fermion liquid originally proposed by HLR lacks particle-hole symmetry and has …
In this work, we investigate the nature of the fractional quantum Hall state in the 1/3-filled second Landau level (SLL) at filling factor $ν=7/3$ (and 8/3 in the presence of the particle-hole symmetry) via exact diagonalization in both torus and spherical geometries. Specifically, we compute the overlap between the exact 7/3 ground state and various competing states including (i) the Laughlin state, (ii) the fermionic Haffnian state, (iii) the antisymmetrized product state of two composite fermion seas at 1/6 filling, and (iv) the particle-hole (PH) conjugate of the $Z_4$ parafermion state. A…
