No Arabic abstract
The nature of the fractional quantum Hall effect at $ u=1/2$ observed in wide quantum wells almost three decades ago is still under debate. Previous studies have investigated it by the variational Monte Carlo method, which makes the assumption that the transverse wave function and the gap between the symmetric and antisymmetric subbands obtained in a local density approximation at zero magnetic field remain valid even at high perpendicular magnetic fields; this method also ignores the effect of Landau level mixing. We develop in this work a three-dimensional fixed phase Monte Carlo method, which gives, in a single framework, the total energies of various candidate states in a finite width quantum well, including Landau level mixing, directly in a large magnetic field. This method can be applied to one-component states, as well two-component states in the limit where the symmetric and antisymmetric bands are nearly degenerate. Our three-dimensional fixed-phase diffusion Monte Carlo calculations suggest that the observed 1/2 fractional quantum Hall state in wide quantum wells is likely to be the one-component Pfaffian state supporting non-Abelian excitations. We hope that this will motivate further experimental studies of this state.
We study the nature of the u=5/2 quantum Hall state in wide quantum wells under the mixing of electronic subbands and Landau levels. We introduce a general method to analyze the Moore-Read Pfaffian state and its particle-hole conjugate, the anti-Pfaffian, under periodic boundary conditions in a quartered Brillouin zone scheme containing both even and odd numbers of electrons. We examine the rotational quantum numbers on the torus, and show spontaneous breaking of the particle-hole symmetry can be observed in finite-size systems. In the presence of electronic-subband and Landau-level mixing the particle-hole symmetry is broken in such a way that the anti-Pfaffian is unambiguously favored, and becomes more robust in the vicinity of a transition to the compressible phase, in agreement with recent experiments.
We observe fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE) at the even-denominator Landau level filling factor $ u=1/2$ in two-dimensional hole systems confined to GaAs quantum wells of width 30 to 50 nm and having bilayer-like charge distributions. The $ u=1/2$ FQHE is stable when the charge distribution is symmetric and only in a range of intermediate densities, qualitatively similar to what is seen in two-dimensional electron systems confined to approximately twice wider GaAs quantum wells. Despite the complexity of the hole Landau level structure, originating from the coexistence and mixing of the heavy- and light-hole states, we find the hole $ u=1/2$ FQHE to be consistent with a two-component, Halperin-Laughlin ($Psi_{331}$) state.
We report the observation of developing fractional quantum Hall states at Landau level filling factors $ u = 1/2$ and 1/4 in electron systems confined to wide GaAs quantum wells with significantly $asymmetric$ charge distributions. The very large electric subband separation and the highly asymmetric charge distribution at which we observe these quantum Hall states, together with the fact that they disappear when the charge distribution is made symmetric, suggest that these are one-component states, possibly described by the Moore-Read Pfaffian wavefunction.
We study how the stability of the fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE) is influenced by the geometry of band structure in lattice Chern insulators. We consider the Hofstadter model, which converges to continuum Landau levels in the limit of small flux per plaquette. This gives us a degree of analytic control not possible in generic lattice models, and we are able to obtain analytic expressions for the relevant geometric criteria. These may be differentiated by whether they converge exponentially or polynomially to the continuum limit. We demonstrate that the latter criteria have a dominant effect on the physics of interacting particles in Hofstadter bands in this low flux density regime. In particular, we show that the many-body gap depends monotonically on a band-geometric criterion related to the trace of the Fubini-Study metric.
Applying a unified approach, we study integer quantum Hall effect (IQHE) and fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE) in the Hofstadter model with short range interaction between fermions. An effective field, that takes into account the interaction, is determined by both the amplitude and phase. Its amplitude is proportional to the interaction strength, the phase corresponds to the minimum energy. In fact the problem is reduced to the Harper equation with two different scales: the first is a magnetic scale (cell size corresponding to a unit quantum magnetic flux), the second scale (determines the inhomogeneity of the effective field) forms the steady fine structure of the Hofstadter spectrum and leads to the realization of fractional quantum Hall states. In a sample of finite sizes with open boundary conditions, the fine structure of the Hofstadter spectrum also includes the fine structure of the edge chiral modes. The subbands in a fine structure of the Hofstadter band (HB) are separated extremely small quasigaps. The Chern number of a topological HB is conserved during the formation of its fine structure. Edge modes are formed into HB, they connect the nearest-neighbor subbands and determine the fractional conductance for the fractional filling at the Fermi energies corresponding to these quasigaps.