No Arabic abstract
This chapter appears in Fractional Quantum Hall Effects: New Development, edited by B. I. Halperin and J. K. Jain (World Scientific, 2020). The chapter begins with a primer on composite fermions, and then reviews three directions that have recently been pursued. It reports on theoretical calculations making detailed quantitative predictions for two sets of phenomena, namely spin polarization transitions and the phase diagram of the crystal. This is followed by the Kohn-Sham density functional theory of the fractional quantum Hall effect. The chapter concludes with recent applications of the parton theory of the fractional quantum Hall effect to certain delicate states.
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.
The fractional quantum Hall (FQH) effect was discovered in two-dimensional electron systems subject to a large perpendicular magnetic field nearly four decades ago. It helped launch the field of topological phases, and in addition, because of the quenching of the kinetic energy, gave new meaning to the phrase correlated matter. Most FQH phases are gapped like insulators and superconductors; however, a small subset with even denominator fractional fillings nu of the Landau level, typified by nu = 1/2, are found to be gapless, with a Fermi surface akin to metals. We discuss our results, obtained numerically using the infinite Density Matrix Renormalization Group (iDMRG) scheme, on the effect of non-isotropic distortions with discrete N-fold rotational symmetry of the Fermi surface at zero magnetic field on the Fermi surface of the correlated nu = 1/2 state. We find that while the response for N = 2 (elliptical) distortions is significant (and in agreement with experimental observations with no adjustable parameters), it decreases very rapidly as N is increased. Other anomalies, like resilience to breaking the Fermi surface into disjoint pieces, are also found. This highlights the difference between Fermi surfaces formed from the kinetic energy, and those formed of purely potential energy terms in the Hamiltonian.
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.
We propose a (4+1) dimensional Chern-Simons field theoretical description of the fractional quantum Hall effect. It suggests that composite fermions reside on a momentum manifold with a nonzero Chern number. Based on derivations from microscopic wave functions, we further show that the momentum manifold has a uniformly distributed Berry curvature. As a result, composite fermions do not follow the ordinary Newtonian dynamics as commonly believed, but the more general symplectic one. For a Landau level with the particle-hole symmetry, the theory correctly predicts its Hall conductance at half-filling as well as the symmetry between an electron filling fraction and its hole counterpart.
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$.