We investigate the quasiparticle excitation of the bilayer quantum Hall (QH) system at total filling factor $ u_{mathrm{T}} = 1$ in the limit of negligible interlayer tunneling under tilted magnetic field. We show that the intrinsic quasiparticle excitation is of purely pseudospin origin and solely governed by the inter- and intra-layer electron interactions. A model based on exciton formation successfully explains the quantitative behavior of the quasiparticle excitation gap, demonstrating the existence of a link between the excitonic QH state and the composite fermion liquid. Our results provide a new insight into the nature of the phase transition between the two states.
A real-space formulation is given for the recently discussed exciton condensate in a symmetrically biased graphene bilayer. We show that in the continuum limit an oddly-quantized vortex in this condensate binds exactly one zero mode per valley index of the bilayer. In the full lattice model the zero modes are split slightly due to intervalley mixing. We support these results by an exact numerical diagonalization of the lattice Hamiltonian. We also discuss the effect of the zero modes on the charge content of these vortices and deduce some of their interesting properties.
A properly strained graphene monolayer or bilayer is expected to harbour periodic pseudo-magnetic fields with high symmetry, yet to date, a convincing demonstration of such pseudo-magnetic fields has been lacking, especially for bilayer graphene. Here, we report the first definitive experimental proof for the existence of large-area, periodic pseudo-magnetic fields, as manifested by vortex lattices in commensurability with the moire patterns of low-angle twisted bilayer graphene. The pseudo-magnetic fields are strong enough to confine the massive Dirac electrons into circularly localized pseudo-Landau levels, as observed by scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy, and also corroborated by tight-binding calculations. We further demonstrate that the geometry, amplitude, and periodicity of the pseudo-magnetic field can be fine-tuned by both the rotation angle and heterostrain applied to the system. Collectively, the present study substantially enriches twisted bilayer graphene as a powerful enabling platform for exploration of new and exotic physical phenomena, including quantum valley Hall effects and quantum anomalous Hall effects.
The condensation of excitons, bound electron-hole pairs in a solid, into a coherent collective electronic state was predicted over 50 years ago. Perhaps surprisingly, the phenomenon was first observed in a system consisting of two closely-spaced parallel two-dimensional electron gases in a semiconductor double quantum well. At an appropriate high magnetic field and low temperature, the bilayer electron system condenses into a state resembling a superconductor, only with the Cooper pairs replaced by excitons comprised of electrons in one layer bound to holes in the other. In spite of being charge neutral, the transport of excitons within the condensate gives rise to several spectacular electrical effects. This article describes these phenomena and examines how they inform our understanding of this unique phase of quantum electronic matter.
We uncover topological features of neutral particle-hole pair excitations of correlated quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) insulators whose approximately flat conduction and valence bands have equal and opposite non-zero Chern number. Using an exactly solvable model we show that the underlying band topology affects both the center-of-mass and relative motion of particle-hole bound states. This leads to the formation of topological exciton bands whose features are robust to nonuniformity of both the dispersion and the Berry curvature. We apply these ideas to recently-reported broken-symmetry spontaneous QAH insulators in substrate aligned magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene.
We report quantum Monte Carlo calculations of biexciton binding energies in ideal two-dimensional bilayer systems with isotropic electron and hole masses. We have also calculated exciton-exciton interaction potentials, and pair distribution functions for electrons and holes in bound biexcitons. Comparing our data with results obtained in a recent study using a model exciton-exciton potential [C. Schindler and R. Zimmermann, Phys. Rev. B textbf{78}, 045313 (2008)], we find a somewhat larger range of layer separations at which biexcitons are stable. We find that individual excitons retain their identity in bound biexcitons for large layer separations.