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Density dependence of valley polarization energy for composite fermions

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 Added by Medini Padmanabhan
 Publication date 2009
  fields Physics
and research's language is English




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In two-dimensional electron systems confined to wide AlAs quantum wells, composite fermions around the filling factor $ u$ = 3/2 are fully spin polarized but possess a valley degree of freedom. Here we measure the energy needed to completely valley polarize these composite fermions as a function of electron density. Comparing our results to the existing theory, we find overall good quantitative agreement, but there is an unexpected trend: The measured composite fermion valley polarization energy, normalized to the Coulomb energy, decreases with decreasing density.



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In an ideal two-component two-dimensional electron system, particle-hole symmetry dictates that the fractional quantum Hall states around $ u = 1/2$ are equivalent to those around $ u = 3/2$. We demonstrate that composite fermions (CFs) around $ u = 1/2$ in AlAs possess a valley degree of freedom like their counterparts around $ u = 3/2$. However, focusing on $ u = 2/3$ and 4/3, we find that the energy needed to completely valley polarize the CFs around $ u = 1/2$ is considerably smaller than the corresponding value for CFs around $ u = 3/2$ thus betraying a particle-hole symmetry breaking.
Hall viscosity, also known as the Lorentz shear modulus, has been proposed as a topological property of a quantum Hall fluid. Using a recent formulation of the composite fermion theory on the torus, we evaluate the Hall viscosities for a large number of fractional quantum Hall states at filling factors of the form $ u=n/(2pnpm 1)$, where $n$ and $p$ are integers, from the explicit wave functions for these states. The calculated Hall viscosities $eta^A$ agree with the expression $eta^A=(hbar/4) {cal S}rho$, where $rho$ is the density and ${cal S}=2ppm n$ is the shift in the spherical geometry. We discuss the role of modular invariance of the wave functions, of the center-of-mass momentum, and also of the lowest-Landau-level projection. Finally, we show that the Hall viscosity for $ u={nover 2pn+1}$ may be derived analytically from the microscopic wave functions, provided that the overall normalization factor satisfies a certain behavior in the thermodynamic limit. This derivation should be applicable to a class of states in the parton construction, which are products of integer quantum Hall states with magnetic fields pointing in the same direction.
In 1929 Felix Bloch suggested that the paramagnetic Fermi sea of electrons should make a spontaneous transition to a fully-magnetized state at very low densities, because the exchange energy gained by aligning the spins exceeds the enhancement in the kinetic energy. We report here the observation of an abrupt, interaction-driven transition to full magnetization, highly reminiscent of Bloch ferromagnetism that has eluded experiments for the last ninety years. Our platform is the exotic two-dimensional Fermi sea of composite fermions at half-filling of the lowest Landau level. Via quantitative measurements of the Fermi wavevector, which provides a direct measure of the spin polarization, we observe a sudden transition from a partially-spin-polarized to a fully-spin-polarized ground state as we lower the composite fermions density. Our detailed theoretical calculations provide a semi-quantitative account of this phenomenon.
Two-dimensional interacting electrons exposed to strong perpendicular magnetic fields generate emergent, exotic quasiparticles phenomenologically distinct from electrons. Specifically, electrons bind with an even number of flux quanta, and transform into composite fermions (CFs). Besides providing an intuitive explanation for the fractional quantum Hall states, CFs also possess Fermi-liquid-like properties, including a well-defined Fermi sea, at and near even-denominator Landau level filling factors such as $ u=1/2$ or $1/4$. Here, we directly probe the Fermi sea of the rarely studied four-flux CFs near $ u=1/4$ via geometric resonance experiments. The data reveal some unique characteristics. Unlike in the case of two-flux CFs, the magnetic field positions of the geometric resonance resistance minima for $ u<1/4$ and $ u>1/4$ are symmetric with respect to the position of $ u=1/4$. However, when an in-plane magnetic field is applied, the minima positions become asymmetric, implying a mysterious asymmetry in the CF Fermi sea anisotropy for $ u<1/4$ and $ u>1/4$. This asymmetry, which is in stark contrast to the two-flux CFs, suggests that the four-flux CFs on the two sides of $ u=1/4$ have very different effective masses, possibly because of the proximity of the Wigner crystal formation at small $ u$.
Topological pairing of composite fermions has led to remarkable ideas, such as excitations obeying non-Abelian braid statistics and topological quantum computation. We construct a $p$-wave paired Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) wave function for composite fermions in the torus geometry, which is a convenient geometry for formulating momentum space pairing as well as for revealing the underlying composite-fermion Fermi sea. Following the standard BCS approach, we minimize the Coulomb interaction energy at half filling in the lowest and the second Landau levels, which correspond to filling factors $ u=1/2$ and $ u=5/2$ in GaAs quantum wells, by optimizing two variational parameters that are analogous to the gap and the Debye cut-off energy of the BCS theory. Our results show no evidence for pairing at $ u=1/2$ but a clear evidence for pairing at $ u=5/2$. To a good approximation, the highest overlap between the exact Coulomb ground state at $ u=5/2$ and the BCS state is obtained for parameters that minimize the energy of the latter, thereby providing support for the physics of composite-fermion pairing as the mechanism for the $5/2$ fractional quantum Hall effect. We discuss the issue of modular covariance of the composite-fermion BCS wave function, and calculate its Hall viscosity and pair correlation function. By similar methods, we look for but do not find an instability to $s$-wave pairing for a spin-singlet composite-fermion Fermi sea at half-filled lowest Landau level in a system where the Zeeman splitting has been set to zero.
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