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arXiv:1712.02357 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Semiclassical theory of the tunneling anomaly in partially spin-polarized compressible quantum Hall states

Debanjan Chowdhury, Brian J. Skinner, Patrick A. Lee

Published May 9, 2018• 5 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Electron tunneling into a system with strong interactions is known to exhibit an anomaly, in which the tunneling conductance vanishes continuously at low energy due to many-body interactions. Recent measurements have probed this anomaly in a quantum Hall bilayer of the half-filled Landau level, and shown that the anomaly apparently gets stronger as the half-filled Landau level is increasingly spin polarized. Motivated by this result, we construct a semiclassical hydrodynamic theory of the tunneling anomaly in terms of the charge-spreading action associated with tunneling between two copies of the Halperin-Lee-Read state with partial spin polarization. This theory is complementary to our recent work (D. Chowdhury, B. Skinner, and P. A. Lee, arXiv:1709.06091) where the electron spectral function was computed directly using an instanton-based approach. Our results show that the experimental observation cannot be understood within conventional theories of the tunneling anomaly, in which the spreading of the injected charge is driven by the mean-field Coulomb energy. However, we identify a qualitatively new regime, in which the mean-field Coulomb energy is effectively quenched and the tunneling anomaly is dominated by the finite compressibility of the composite Fermion liquid.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.97.195114

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Electron tunneling into a system with strong interactions is known to exhibit an anomaly, in which the tunneling conductance vanishes continuously at low energy due to many-body interactions. Recent measurements have probed this anomaly in a quantum Hall bilayer of the half-filled Landau level, and shown that the anomaly apparently gets stronger as the half-filled Landau level is increasingly spin polarized. Motivated by this result, we construct a semiclassical hydrodynamic theory of the tunneling anomaly in terms of the charge-spreading action associated with tunneling between two copies of the Halperin-Lee-Read state with partial spin polarization. This theory is complementary to our recent work (D. Chowdhury, B. Skinner, and P. A. Lee, arXiv:1709.06091) where the electron spectral function was computed directly using an instanton-based approach. Our results show that the experimental observation cannot be understood within conventional theories of the tunneling anomaly, in which the spreading of the injected charge is driven by the mean-field Coulomb energy. However, we identify a qualitatively new regime, in which the mean-field Coulomb energy is effectively quenched and the tunneling anomaly is dominated by the finite compressibility of the composite Fermion liquid.
We consider the Hall conductivity of composite fermions in the theory of Halperin, Lee, and Read (HLR) [B. I. Halperin, P. A. Lee, and N. Read, Phys. Rev. B 47, 7312 (1993)]. 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 the particle-hole symmetric response can appear in the ac Hall conductivity at frequencies sufficiently large compared to the inverse system size. Our results agree with a recent semiclassical analysis by Wang et al. [C. Wang, N. R. Cooper, B. I. Halperin, and A. Stern, Phys. Rev. X 7, 031029 (2017)] and complement the arguments based on the fully quantum-mechanical model by Kumar et al. [P. Kumar, M. Mulligan, and S. Raghu, Phys. Rev. B 98, 115105 (2018)]. These results provide further evidence that the HLR theory is compatible with an emergent particle-hole symmetry.
We examine the possibility of creating the Moore-Read Pfaffian in the lowest Landau level when the multicomponent Halperin 331 state (believed to describe quantum Hall bilayers and wide quantum wells at the filling factor $\ensuremath{\nu}=1/2$) is destroyed by the increase of tunneling. Using exact diagonalization of the bilayer Hamiltonian with short-range and long-range (Coulomb) interactions in spherical and periodic rectangular geometries, we establish that tunneling is a perturbation that drives the 331 state into a compressible composite Fermi liquid, with the possibility for an intermediate critical state that is reminiscent of the Moore-Read Pfaffian. These results are interpreted in the two-component BCS model for Cauchy pairing with a tunneling constraint. We comment on the conditions to be imposed on a system with fluctuating density in order to achieve the stable Pfaffian phase.
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 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 the lowest Landau level, we find that although, in principle, increasing (decreasing) tunneling strength (layer separation) could lead to a transition from the Abelian two-component Halperin 331 to non-Abelian one-component Moore-Read Pfaffian state, the FQHE excitation gap is relatively small in the lowest Landau level Pfaffian regime, and we establish that all so far observed FQHE states in half-filled lowest Landau level bilayers are most likely described by the Abelian Halperin 331 state. In the second Landau level we make the prediction that bilayer structures would manifest two distinct branches of incompressible FQHE corresponding to the Abelian 331 state (at moderate to low tunneling and large layer separation) and the non-Abelian Moore-Read Pfaffian state (at large tunneling and small layer separation). The observation of these two FQHE branches and the possible quantum phase transition between them will be compelling evidence supporting the existence of the non-Abelian Moore-Read Pfaffian state in the second Landau level. We discuss our results in the context of existing experiments and theoretical works.
We study the compressible states in the quantum Hall system using a mean field theory on the von Neumann lattice. In the lowest Landau level, a kinetic energy is generated dynamically from Coulomb interaction. The compressibility of the state is calculated as a function of the filling factor $\ensuremath{\nu}$ and the width ddd of the spacer between the charge carrier layer and dopants. The compressibility becomes negative below a critical value of ddd and the state becomes unstable at $\ensuremath{\nu}\phantom{\rule{0ex}{0ex}}=\phantom{\rule{0ex}{0ex}}1/2$. Within a finite range around $\ensuremath{\nu}\phantom{\rule{0ex}{0ex}}=\phantom{\rule{0ex}{0ex}}1/2$, the stable compressible state exists above the critical value of ddd.
We compare ground-state energies by variational Monte Carlo of the spin unpolarized Halperin 331 and the spin polarized Moore-Read (MR) Pfaffian fractional quantum Hall states at half filling of the lowest Landau level (LLL) and the second Landau level (SLL) as a function of small deviations around the Coulomb point via the finite-thickness effect and direct alterations to the the first two Haldane pseudopotentials. In the comparison we find that in the LLL, either the 331 state or the MR Pfaffian may be lower in energy depending on the deviations. In the SLL, however, the MR Pfaffian is consistently lower in energy except for large deviations. These results suggest that even under moderate deviations in the interaction potential (through various physical processes such as finite thickness, Landau-level mixing, etc.), the MR Pfaffian description is more energetically favorable than the Halperin 331 state in the half-filled SLL (i.e., $\ensuremath{\nu}=5/2$), consistent with recent experimental investigations.
Recent experiments in monolayer and trilayer graphene have observed incompressible even-denominator fractional quantum Hall states within narrow regions of parameter space associated with crossings of zeroth Landau levels. This is surprising because at half filling the Coulomb interaction in the zeroth Landau level is expected to favour a compressible composite Fermi liquid. Here we provide the first quantitative energetic study of the candidate incompressible phases and of the microscopic mechanisms that can stabilise them near such Landau-level crossings. Using exact diagonalization and infinite density-matrix renormalisation group, we first study ultra-short-range corrections to the Coulomb interaction arising from finite layer separation, lattice-scale effects, and electron-phonon coupling. We find that a sufficiently strong attractive short-range interaction drives the composite Fermi liquid first into a weakly paired ddd-wave pseudospin-singlet state and subsequently into a strongly paired state. However, microscopic estimates of these short-range corrections are far too small to stabilise either incompressible phase. We then incorporate Landau-level mixing through screening within the random-phase approximation. Screening substantially reshapes the effective interaction, suppresses the weak-pairing regime, and strongly enhances the tendency toward strong pairing. For a realistic range of microscopic parameters, the strongly paired phase is stabilised over a substantial fraction of that range. Our results identify the interplay of Landau-level mixing and ultra-short-range interactions as a plausible microscopic mechanism for the experimentally observed incompressible states in monolayer and trilayer graphene and point toward a strongly paired composite-fermion phase as their candidate ground state.