We begin by scrutinizing a recent proposal that presents an alternate description of the half-filled Landau level in terms of massless Dirac fermions. In Chapter \\ref{chap:HFLL}, we examine the possibility of pairing of these Dirac fermions by numerically solving the coupled Eliashberg equations unlike a related previous calculation (Wang and Chakravarty, 2016). In addition, vertex corrections are calculated to be zero from the Ward identity. We find that pairing is possible in non-zero angular momentum channels; only differences are minor numerical shifts. As before, the pairing leads to the gapped Pfaffian and anti-Pfaffian states. However, in our approximation scheme, pairing is not possible in the putative particle–hole symmetric state for
l=0 angular momentum. The specific heat at low temperatures of a system of massless Dirac fermions interacting with a transverse gauge field, expected to be relevant for the half-filled Landau level, is calculated. Using the Luttinger formula, it is found to be
proptoTlnT in the leading low temperature limit, due to the exchange of transverse gauge bosons. The result agrees with the corresponding one in the nonrelativistic composite fermion theory of Halperin, Lee and Read of the half-filled Landau level.The rest of the thesis concerns the cuprate high-
Tc superconductors (``cuprates''). Conventional wisdom says that beyond the superconducting ``dome'' in cuprates, the material behaves as a Fermi liquid. However, this picture does not help explain the disappearance of the superconducting order parameter, and there are some anomalous measurements that cannot be explained by a Fermi liquid phase. It was proposed by Kopp, Ghosal, and Chakravarty that there is a \\emph{ferromagnetic} phase at zero temperature beyond the superconducting dome, and that fluctuations of the ferromagnetic order parameter compete with the superconducting order parameter and work to suppress the superconducting transition temperature \\cite{Kopp:2007fn}. In Chapter \\ref{chap:ferro} we summarize the experimental evidence for ferromagnetic fluctuations in the overdoped cuprates, and present several calculations supporting the existence of a ferromagnetic ground state in the 2D single-band Hubbard model, which model is thought to provide an adequate description of the cuprate superconductors.Another region of interest in the cuprate phase diagram is the pseudogap phase. It is unclear which of a host of competing order parameters is responsible for the behavior in this phase, such as the recent observation of an anomalous thermal Hall conductance in the cuprate La
2−xSr
xCuO
4 \\cite{Grissonnanche:2019gx}. One promising candidate is the
d-density wave state. In Chapter \\ref{chap:DMI}, we investigate the effect that density wave states have on the localized spins of a square lattice. We derive the effective Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya (DM) interaction from first principles and study its effects on both ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic backgrounds. We find that topologically nontrivial density wave states can induce stable DM interactions among the localized spins of the lattice when an external magnetic field is present. Furthermore, these density wave-induced DM vectors point along the external magnetic field's direction--implying that they break time-reversal and spin rotation symmetries in the same manner. Due to these symmetry considerations alone we find that the underlying magnon excitations cannot induce any thermal Hall effect. Utilizing a Holstein-Primakoff substitution about a mean-field ground state expansion we calculate the topological density wave corrections to magnetic ground state energy, spin canting angles, and the dispersion of the magnons for both the ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic cases.
Here, the authors investigate the possibility that particle-hole symmetry in the lowest Landau level at half filling arises as an emergent low-energy symmetry. Specifically, they start with the traditional approach to the half-filled Landau level: an effective field theory known as the composite Fermi liquid pioneered by Halperin, Lee, and Read. In this theory, composite fermions arise when flux is attached to electrons in a half-filled Landau level. However, an equivalent starting point is one where one starts with a filled Landau level, depletes electrons (or equivalently, adds holes) to the point of half filling. One then attaches flux to the holes, and the resulting composite hole description is another viable description of the half-filled Landau level. The authors construct a particle-hole symmetric theory by studying a system consisting of alternating quasi-one-dimensional strips of composite Fermi liquid (CFL) and composite hole liquid (CHL), both of which break particle-hole symmetry. Gauge invariance requires the existence of gapless edge modes at the interface between the CFL and CHL. Out of these modes, they construct a neutral Dirac fermion coupled to an emergent U(1) gauge field. Thus, at distances long compared to the strip width, they demonstrate that the system is described by a Dirac fermion coupled to an emergent gauge field, with an anti-unitary particle-hole symmetry, precisely the form conjectured recently by Son to be the low-energy description of a particle-hole symmetric half-filled Landau level.
In a recent proposal of the half-filled Landau level, the composite fermions are taken to be Dirac particles and particle-hole symmetric. Cooper pairing of these composite fermions in different angular momentum channels, $\ensuremath{\ell}$, can give rise to different kinds of Pfaffian states. In addition to the well-known Moore-Read Pfaffian and anti-Pfaffian states, a new putative particle-hole symmetric Pfaffian state, corresponding to the
s-wave pairing channel, was also proposed. However, the possible underlying pairing mechanism is not clear at all. In this work we provide a specific pairing mechanism for realizing some of these Pfaffian states. We show that there can be nonzero pairing in angular momentum channels $|\ensuremath{\ell}|\ensuremath{\ge}1$ depending on the magnitude of a coupling constant. There is a quantum phase transition from the Dirac composite Fermi-liquid state to Cooper pairing states in angular momentum channels $|\ensuremath{\ell}|\ensuremath{\ge}1$ as the coupling constant is tuned across its critical point value. Surprisingly the particle-hole symmetric $\ensuremath{\ell}=0$ channel pairing turns out to be impossible irrespective of the size of the coupling constant.
One of the most successful theories of a non-Fermi-liquid metallic state is the composite Fermi-liquid (CFL) theory of the half-filled Landau level. In this paper, we study continuous quantum phase transitions out of the CFL state and into a Landau Fermi liquid, in the limit of no disorder and fixed particle number. This transition can be induced by tuning the bandwidth of the Landau level relative to the interaction energy, for instance through an externally applied periodic potential. We find a transition to the Landau Fermi liquid through a gapless Mott insulator with a Fermi surface of neutral fermionic excitations. In the presence of spatial symmetries, we also find a direct continuous transition between the CFL and the Landau Fermi liquid. The transitions have a number of characteristic observable signatures, including the presence of two crossover temperature scales, resistivity jumps, and vanishing compressibility. When the composite fermions are paired instead, our results imply quantum critical points between various non-Abelian topological states, including the $\ensuremath{\nu}=1/2$ Moore-Read Pfaffian [Ising $\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}$
U(1) topological order], a version of the Kitaev B phase (Ising topological order), and paired electronic superconductors. To study such transitions, we use a projective construction of the CFL, which goes beyond the conventional framework of flux attachment to include a broader set of quantum fluctuations. These considerations suggest a possible route to fractionalized Mott insulators by starting with fractional quantum Hall states and tuning the Landau-level bandwidth.
A system of electrons in a half-filled Landau level is investigated in spherical geometry. For systems of size from N=1 to 14 electrons with flux ${\mathit{N}}_{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\varphi}}}$=2(N-1) the angular momentum of the ground state is as predicted by Hund's second rule for composite fermions of one electron and two vortices at zero magnetic field. Low lying excitations also fit this interpretation and trial wave functions give excellent overlaps. The two-particle correlation function shows a significant correlation hole at short distances and suggests an asymptotically oscillating form at long distances, as in a Fermi liquid.