Coherence network in the quantum Hall bilayer

Recent experiments on quantum Hall bilayers near total filling factor 1 have demonstrated that they support an imperfect two-dimensional superfluidity, in which there is nearly dissipationless transport at nonvanishing temperature observed both in counterflow resistance and interlayer tunneling. We argue that this behavior may be understood in terms of a coherence network induced in the bilayer by disorder, in which an incompressible, coherent state exists in narrow regions separating puddles of dense vortex-antivortex pairs. A renormalization group analysis shows that it is appropriate to describe the system as a vortex liquid. We demonstrate that the dynamics of the nodes of the network leads to a power law temperature dependence of the tunneling resistance, whereas thermally activated hops of vortices across the links control the counterflow resistance.     

Electron interactions and transport between coupled quantum Hall edge states

We examine the effects of electron-electron interactions on transport between edge states in a multilayer integer quantum Hall system. The edge states of such a system, coupled by interlayer tunneling, form a two-dimensional, chiral metal at the sample surface. We calculate the temperature-dependent conductivity and the amplitude of conductance fluctuations in this chiral metal, treating Coulomb interactions and disorder exactly in the weak-tunneling limit. We find that the conductivity increases with increasing temperature, as observed in recent experiments, and we show that the correlation length characterizing conductance fluctuations varies inversely with temperature.     

Interlayer transport in bilayer quantum Hall systems

Bilayer quantum Hall systems have a broken symmetry ground state at a filling factor which can be viewed either as an excitonic superfluid or as a pseudospin ferromagnet. We present a theory of interlayer transport in quantum Hall bilayers that highlights remarkable similarities and critical differences between transport in Josephson junction and ferromagnetic metal spin-transfer devices. Our theory is able to explain the size of the large but finite low-bias interlayer conductance and the voltage width of this collective transport anomaly.     

Resonant rayleigh scattering from bilayer quantum Hall phases

We observe resonant Rayleigh scattering of light from quantum Hall bilayers at Landau level filling factor nu = 1. The effect arises below 1 Kelvin when electrons are in the incompressible quantum Hall phase with strong interlayer correlations. Marked changes in the Rayleigh scattering signal in response to application of an in-plane magnetic field indicate that the unexpected temperature dependence is linked to formation of a nonuniform electron fluid close to the phase transition towards the compressible state. These results demonstrate a new realm of study in which resonant Rayleigh scattering methods probe quantum phases of electrons in semiconductor heterostructures.     

Quantum Hall effects in layered disordered superconductors

Layered singlet paired superconductors with disorder and broken time reversal symmetry are studied, demonstrating a phase diagram with charge-spin separation in transport. In terms of the average intergrain transmission and the interlayer tunneling we find quantum Hall phases with spin Hall coefficients of sigma(spin)(xy)=0,2 separated by a spin metal phase. We identify a spin metal-insulator localization exponent as well as a spin conductivity exponent of approximately 0.96. In the presence of a Zeeman term an additional sigma(spin)(xy)=1 phase appears.     

Dissipation and tunneling in quantum Hall bilayers

We discuss the interplay between transport and intrinsic dissipation in quantum Hall bilayers, within the framework of a simple thought experiment. We compute, for the first time, quantum corrections to the semiclassical dynamics of this system. This allows us to reinterpret tunneling measurements on these systems. We find a strong peak in the zero-temperature tunneling current that arises from the decay of Josephson-like oscillations into incoherent charge fluctuations. In the presence of an in-plane field, resonances in the tunneling current develop an asymmetric line shape.     

Dipolar excitons, spontaneous phase coherence, and superfluid-insulator transition in bilayer quantum Hall systems at nu = 1

The spontaneous interlayer phase coherent (111) state of a bilayer quantum Hall system at filling factor nu = 1 may be viewed as a condensate of interlayer particle-hole pairs or excitons. We show that when the layers are biased in such a way that these excitons are very dilute, they may be viewed as pointlike bosons. We calculate the exciton dispersion relation and show that the exciton-exciton interaction is dominated by the dipole moment they carry. In addition to the phase coherent state, we also find a Wigner crystal/glass phase in the presence/absence of disorder which is an insulating state for the excitons. The position of the phase boundary is estimated and the transition between these two phases is discussed.     

Intrinsic Josephson effects in the magnetic superconductor RuSr2GdCu2O8

We have measured interlayer current transport in small-sized RuSr2GdCu2O8 single crystals. We find a clear intrinsic Josephson effect showing that the material acts as a natural superconductor-insulator-ferromagnet-insulator-superconductor superlattice. Thus far, we detected no unconventional behavior due to the magnetism of the RuO2 layers.     

Transport properties of AA-stacking bilayer graphene nanoribbons

The transport properties of AA-stacking bilayer graphene nanoribbons (GNs) have been explored by using the nonequilibrium Green's function method and the Landauer–Büttiker formalism. It is found that in the case of zero bias, the interlayer coupling has pronounced effects on the conductance of bilayer GNs. The zigzag bilayer GNs remain metallic, but metallic armchair bilayer GNs will be semiconductor as the strength of interlayer coupling exceeds critical value. The first Van Hove singularities move close to the Dirac point for both armchair and zigzag bilayer GNs with the strength of interlayer coupling increasing. Some prominent conductance peaks around the Fermi energy are observed in zigzag bilayer GNs, when the top layer and bottom layer have different widths. In the presence of bias voltage, the I–V curves show that for armchair bilayer GNs, the interlayer interactions suppress current, while the interlayer interactions have almost no effect on the current for zigzag bilayer GNs. The ripples in bilayer GNs suppress electronic transport, especially for zigzag bilayer GNs.     

Dynamical ordering of driven stripe phases in quenched disorder

We examine the dynamics and stripe formation in a system with competing short and long-range interactions in the presence of both an applied dc drive and quenched disorder. Without disorder, the system forms stripes organized in a labyrinth state. We find that, when the disorder strength exceeds a critical value, an applied dc drive can induce a dynamical stripe ordering transition to a state that is more ordered than the originating undriven, unpinned pattern. We show that signatures in the structure factor and transport properties correspond to this dynamical reordering transition, and we present the dynamic phase diagram as a function of strengths of disorder and dc drive.     

Effect of Rashba spin–orbit coupling on the spin polarized transport in diluted magnetic semiconductor barrier structures

We investigate theoretically the effects of Rashba spin–orbit coupling on the spin dependent transport through diluted magnetic semiconductor single and double barrier structures in the presence of a magnetic field. We find that the Rashba spin–orbit coupling gives rise to an enhancement of the negative tunnelling magnetoresistance of the diluted magnetic semiconductor single barrier structure and a pronounced beating pattern in the tunnelling magnetoresistance and spin polarization of the diluted magnetic semiconductor double barrier structure.     

Model of quantum criticality in He3 bilayers adsorbed on graphite

Recent experiments on He3 bilayers adsorbed on graphite have shown striking quantum critical properties at the point where the first layer localizes. We model this system with the Anderson lattice plus interlayer Coulomb repulsion in two dimensions. Assuming that quantum critical fluctuations come from a vanishing of the effective hybridization, we can reproduce several features of the system, including the apparent occurrence of two quantum critical points, the variation of the effective mass and coherence temperature with coverage.     

Quantum confinement in layer-by-layer deposited colloidal HgTe nanocrystals determined by spectroscopic ellipsometry

We report spectroscopic ellipsometry studies in the energy range of 0.5-5 eV on samples of 1-10 bilayers of polymer and HgTe nanocrystals, which exhibit strong transitions at higher critical points in the dispersion relation. We show that the dispersion relation for nanocrystals can be modelled with the same concepts for critical points as used in semiconductor bulk optics. We find an energy shift of up to 0.4 eV of the critical points to higher energies compared to the HgTe bulk properties, caused by quantum confinement in the nanocrystals, which increases with decreasing nanocrystal size.     

Strong correlation to weak correlation phase transition in bilayer quantum Hall systems

At small layer separations, the ground state of a nu = 1 bilayer quantum Hall system exhibits spontaneous interlayer phase coherence. The evolution of this state with increasing layer separation d has been a matter of controversy. We report on small system exact diagonalization calculations which suggest that a single-phase transition, likely of first order, separates incompressible states with strong interlayer correlations from compressible states with weak interlayer correlations. We find a dependence of the phase boundary on d and interlayer tunneling amplitude that is in very good agreement with recent experiments.     

Theory of 2D transport in graphene for correlated disorder

We theoretically revisit graphene transport properties as a function of carrier density, taking into account possible correlations in the spatial distribution of the Coulomb impurity disorder in the environment. We find that the charged impurity correlations give rise to a density-dependent graphene conductivity, which agrees well qualitatively with the existing experimental data. We also find, quite unexpectedly, that the conductivity could increase with increasing impurity density if there is sufficient interimpurity correlation present in the system. In particular, the linearity (sublinearity) of graphene conductivity at lower (higher) gate voltage is naturally explained as arising solely from impurity correlation effects in the Coulomb disorder.     

Theory of activated transport in bilayer quantum Hall systems

We analyze the transport properties of bilayer quantum Hall systems at total filling factor nu=1 in drag geometries as a function of interlayer bias, in the limit where the disorder is sufficiently strong to unbind meron-antimeron pairs, the charged topological defects of the system. We compute the typical energy barrier for these objects to cross incompressible regions within the disordered system using a Hartree-Fock approach, and show how this leads to multiple activation energies when the system is biased. We then demonstrate using a bosonic Chern-Simons theory that in drag geometries current in a single layer directly leads to forces on only two of the four types of merons, inducing dissipation only in the drive layer. Dissipation in the drag layer results from interactions among the merons, resulting in very different temperature dependences for the drag and drive layers, in qualitative agreement with experiment.     

Coulomb drag experiments in low density 2D hole bilayers

We performed experiments studying the Coulomb drag in low density 2D hole bilayers, with r_s ranging from roughly 10 to 20. As the carrier density is lowered into the dilute regime, we observe a significant enhancement of the drag resistivity, such that the interlayer carrier–carrier scattering rate constitutes a major component of the single layer resistivity. In addition, anomalies to the expected temperature and in-plane magnetic field dependences are observed, and are found to correlate with similar anomalies in the single layer resistivity. These results suggests that the origin of the 2D metal–insulator transition phenomena affects both transport properties in a very similar fashion.     

Fractional quantum hall effect in infinite-layer systems

Stacked two dimensional electron systems in transverse magnetic fields exhibit three dimensional fractional quantum Hall phases. We analyze the simplest such phases and find novel bulk properties, e.g. , irrational braiding. These phases host "one and a half" dimensional surface phases in which motion in one direction is chiral. We offer a general analysis of conduction in the latter by combining sum rule and renormalization group arguments, and find that when interlayer tunneling is marginal or irrelevant they are chiral semimetals that conduct only at T > 0 or with disorder.     

Bilayer coherent and quantum Hall phases: duality and quantum disorder

We consider a fully spin-polarized quantum Hall system with no interlayer tunneling at total filling factor nu = 1/k (where k is an odd integer) using the Chern-Simons-Ginzburg-Landau theory. Exploiting particle-vortex duality and the concept of quantum disordering, we find a large number of possible compressible and incompressible ground states, some of which may have relevance to recent experiments of Spielman et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 84, 5808 (2000)]. We find interlayer coherent compressible states without Hall quantization and interlayer incoherent incompressible states with Hall quantization in addition to the usual (k,k,k) Halperin states, which are both interlayer coherent and incompressible.     

Notes on infinite layer quantum Hall systems

We study the fractional quantum Hall effect in three-dimensional systems consisting of infinitely many stacked two-dimensional electron gases placed in transverse magnetic fields. This limit introduces new features into the bulk physics such as quasiparticles with non-trivial internal structure, irrational braiding phases, and the necessity of a boundary hierarchy construction for interlayer correlated states. The bulk states host a family of surface phases obtained by hybridizing the edge states in each layer. We analyze the surface conduction in these phases by means of sum rule and renormalization group arguments and by explicit computations at weak tunneling in the presence of disorder. We find that in cases where the interlayer electron tunneling is not relevant in the clean limit, the surface phases are chiral semi-metals that conduct only in the presence of disorder or at finite temperature. We show that this class of problems which are naturally formulated as interacting bosonic theories can be fermionized by a general technique that could prove useful in the solution of such “one and a half” dimensional problems.