Electron correlations at the fractional quantum Hall edge

This paper reviews tunnel spectroscopy of fractional quantum Hall edges using cleaved-edge overgrown devices. Beginning with an intuitive introduction to various experimental and theoretical aspects, the device structure is reviewed, and the experimental result of a continuum of power-law tunneling exponents is revisited. The unanticipated behavior of the exponent with fractional filling factor is described, and all subsequent theoretical explanations for these results are laid out for comparison. Finally, we propose new directions for experimentally resolving the remaining questions.     

Exact results for systems of electrons in the fractional quantum Hall regime

There has been a great deal of interest over the last two decades on the fractional quantum Hall effect, a novel quantum many-body liquid state of strongly correlated two-dimensional electronic systems in a strong perpendicular magnetic field. The most pronounced fractional quantum Hall states occur at odd denominator filling factors of the lowest Landau level and are described by the Laughlin wave function. It is well known that exact closed-form solutions for many-body wave functions, including the Laughlin wave function, are generally very rare and hard to obtain. In this work we present some exact results corresponding to small systems of electrons in the fractional quantum Hall regime at odd denominator filling factors. Use of Jacobi coordinates is the key tool that facilitates the exact calculation of various quantities. Expressions involving integrals over many variables are considerably simplified with the help of Jacobi coordinates allowing us to calculate exactly various quantities corresponding to systems with several electrons.     

Inhomogeneous Hall-geometry sample in the quantum Hall regime

A generalization of the known theory describing the Hall channels with integer filling factors in inhomogeneous 2D electronic samples to the case of a stationary nonequilibrium state (with a nonzero Hall voltage V _H across the 2D system) is proposed. For the central strip located near the extremum of the electron density, the theory predicts a change in its width and a shift of the whole strip from the equilibrium position as functions of V _H . The theoretical results are used to interpret recent experiments on measuring the local electric fields along the Hall samples both in equilibrium conditions and in the presence of transport in the quantum Hall regime.     

Exact results for systems of electrons in the fractional quantum Hall regime II

In a previous work [O. Ciftja, Physica B 404 (2009) 227] we reported the exact calculation of energies for the fractional quantum Hall Laughlin state at filling factor for systems with up to N=4 electrons in a disk geometry. The purpose of this brief extension of the earlier work is to report similar exact results for the other Laughlin state at filling factor . We use the same method of orthogonal Jacobi variables adopted in the earlier work.     

Universal scaling results for the plateau-insulator transition in the quantum Hall regime

The plateau-insulator (PI) transition in the quantum Hall regime, in remarkable contrast to the plateau-plateau (PP) transition, exhibits very special features that enable one for the first time to disentwine the quantum critical aspects of the electron gas (scaling functions, critical indices) from the sample dependent effects of macroscopic inhomogeneities (contact misalignments, density gradients). In this communication we report new experimental data taken from the PI transition of a low-mobility InGaAs/InP heterostructure and propose universal scaling functions for the transport coefficients. Our new findings elucidate fundamental theoretical aspects of quantum criticality that have so far remained inaccessible.     

Light scattering observations of spin reversal excitations in the fractional quantum Hall regime

Resonant inelastic light scattering experiments access the low lying excitations of electron liquids in the fractional quantum Hall regime in the range 2/5≥ν≥1/3. Modes associated with changes in the charge and spin degrees of freedom are measured. Spectra of spin reversed excitations at filling factor ν?1/3 and at ν?2/5 identify a structure of lowest spin-split Landau levels of composite fermions (CFs) that is similar to that of electrons. Observations of spin wave excitations enable determinations of energies required to reverse spin. The spin reversal energies obtained from the spectra illustrate the significant residual interactions of composite fermions. At ν=1/3 energies of spin reversal modes are larger but relatively close to spin conserving excitations that are linked to activated transport. Predictions of composite fermion theory are in good quantitative agreement with experimental results.     

Self-channelling of electric current in a quantum well

We have directly demonstrated that homogeneous photoexcitation of a quantum well in presence of uniform tilted magnetic field gives rise to a set of bypass in-plane electric currents of a different value which may flow even in the opposite directions simultaneously. The effect has been observed in an asymmetric InAs quantum well under the Landau quantization. Theoretical model of the effect are discussed as well as the related problems.     

θ renormalization, electron-electron interactions and super universality in the quantum Hall regime

The renormalization theory of the quantum Hall effect relies primarily on the non-perturbative concept of θ renormalization by instantons. Within the generalized non-linear σ model approach initiated by Finkelstein we obtain the physical observables of the interacting electron gas, formulate the general (topological) principles by which the Hall conductance is robustly quantized and derive—for the first time—explicit expressions for the non-perturbative (instanton) contributions to the renormalization group β and γ functions. Our results are in complete agreement with the recently proposed idea of super universality which says that the fundamental aspects of the quantum Hall effect are all generic features the instanton vacuum concept in asymptotically free field theory.     

Fractional quantum Hall regime of a gas of ultracold atoms

We study the physics of a rapidly rotating gas of ultracold bosonic atoms. In the limit of very rapid rotation of the trap the system exhibits a fractional quantum Hall regime analogous to that of electrons in the fractional quantum Hall effect. We show that the ground state of the system is a 1/2-Laughlin liquid, a highly correlated atomic liquid. Exotic excitations consisting of localized quasiholes of 1/2 of an atom can be created by focusing lasers at the desired positions. We show how to manipulate these quasiholes in order to probe directly their 1/2-statistics.     

Electron interactions in an antidot in the integer quantum Hall regime

A quantum antidot, a submicron depletion region in a two-dimensional electron system, has been actively studied in the past two decades, providing a powerful tool for understanding quantum Hall systems. In a perpendicular magnetic field, electrons form bound states around the antidot. Aharonov–Bohm resonances through such bound states have been experimentally studied, showing interesting phenomena such as Coulomb charging, h/2e$h/2e$ oscillations, spectator modes, signatures of electron interactions in the line shape, Kondo effect, etc. None of them can be explained by a simple noninteracting electron approach. Theoretical models for the above observations have been developed recently, such as a capacitive-interaction model for explaining the h/2e$h/2e$ oscillations and the Kondo effect, numerical prediction of a hole maximum-density-droplet antidot ground state, and spin-density-functional theory for investigating the compressibility of antidot edges. In this review, we summarize such experimental and theoretical works on electron interactions in antidots.     

Evidence for spontaneous interlayer phase coherence in a bilayer quantum Hall exciton condensate

Recent experimental work on the quantized Hall state at total filling factor ν_T=1 in bilayer 2D electron systems has revealed a number of striking phenomena, including a giant and sharply resonant enhancement of the interlayer tunneling conductance at zero bias. The tunneling enhancement is a compelling indicator of spontaneous interlayer phase coherence among the electrons in the system. Such phase coherence is perhaps the single most important attribute of the excitonic Bose condensate which describes this remarkable quantum Hall state.     

Metastable phase in the quantum Hall ferromagnet

Time-dependent capacitance measurements reveal an unstable phase of electrons in gallium arsenide quantum well that occurs when two Landau levels with opposite-spin are brought close to degeneracy by applying a gate voltage. This phase emerges below a critical temperature and displays a peculiar non-equilibrium dynamical evolution. The relaxation dynamics is found to follow a stretched-exponential behaviour and correlates with hysteresis loops observed by sweeping the magnetic field. These experiments indicate that metastable randomly distributed magnetic domains with peculiar excitations are involved in the relaxation process in a way that is equivalently tunable by a change in gate voltage or temperature.     

Forward scattering approximation and bosonization in integer quantum Hall systems

In this work, we present a model and a method to study integer quantum Hall (IQH) systems. Making use of the Landau levels structure we divide these two-dimensional systems into a set of interacting one-dimensional gases, one for each guiding center. We show that the so-called strong field approximation, used by Kallin and Halperin and by MacDonald, is equivalent, in first order, to a forward scattering approximation and analyze the IQH systems within this approximation. Using an appropriate variation of the Landau level bosonization method we obtain the dispersion relations for the collective excitations and the single-particle spectral functions. For the bulk states, these results evidence a behavior typical of non-normal strongly correlated systems, including the spin-charge splitting of the single-particle spectral function. We discuss the origin of this behavior in the light of the Tomonaga-Luttinger model and the bosonization of two-dimensional electron gases.     

Directed transport in quantum Hall bilayers

The pseudo-spin model for a double layer quantum Hall system with the total landau level filling factor ν=1 is discussed. In contrast to the “traditional” model where the interlayer voltage enters as a static magnetic field along pseudo-spin hard axis, taking into account the realistic experimental situation, in our model we interpret the influence of applied voltage as a source of additional relaxation process in the double layer system. We show that the Landau-Lifshitz equation for the considered pseudo-magnetic system well describes existing experimental data and reduces to the dc driven and damped sine-Gordon equation. As a result, the mentioned model predicts novel directed intra-layer transport phenomenon in the system. In particular, unidirectional intra-layer energy transport can be realized due to the motion of topological kinks induced by applied voltage. Experimentally this should be manifested as counter-propagating intra-layer inhomogeneous charge currents proportional to the interlayer voltage and total topological charge of the pseudo-spin system.     

Resonant enhancement of inelastic light scattering in the fractional quantum Hall regime at ν=1/3

Strong resonant enhancements of inelastic light scattering from the long wavelength inter-Landau level magnetoplasmon and the intra-Landau level spin wave excitations are seen for the fractional quantum Hall state at ν=1/3. The energies of the sharp peaks (FWHM 0.2 meV) in the profiles of resonant enhancement of inelastic light scattering intensities coincide with the energies of photoluminescence bands assigned to negatively charged exciton recombination. To interpret the observed enhancement profiles, we propose three-step light scattering mechanisms in which the intermediate resonant transitions are to states with charged excitonic excitations.     

Network coherence and imperfect superfluidity in the quantum Hall bilayer

Recently, superfluid-like properties have been observed in bilayer quantum Hall systems, in which the effective bosonic particles are understood to be electron-hole pairs. While experimental results are highly suggestive of superfluidity, the linear response of this system remains dissipative down to the lowest available temperatures. We demonstrate that these results may be understood in terms of a unique disorder-dominated state, in which the system organizes into a coherence network, with large incoherent regions separated by quasi-one-dimensional coherent strips with vortices and antivortices at their edges. We demonstrate that this novel state supports nearly dissipationless response at non-vanishing temperatures which can explain a number of puzzling experimental results.     

Energy relaxation of two-dimensional electrons in the quantum Hall effect regime

The mm-wave spectroscopy with high temporal resolution is used to measure the energy relaxation times τ_e of 2D electrons in GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures in magnetic fields B=0–4 T under quasi-equilibrium conditions at T=4.2 K. With increasing B, a considerable increase in τe from 0.9 to 25 ns is observed. For high B and low values of the filling factor ν, the energy relaxation rate τ _e ^?1 oscillates. The depth of these oscillations and the positions of maxima depend on the filling factor ν. For ν>5, the relaxation rate τ _e ^?1 is maximum when the Fermi level lies in the region of the localized states between the Landau levels. For lower values of ν, the relaxation rate is maximum at half-integer values of τ _e ^?1 when the Fermi level is coincident with the Landau level. The characteristic features of the dependence τ _e ^?1 (B) are explained by different contributions of the intralevel and interlevel electron-phonon transitions to the process of the energy relaxation of 2D electrons.     

Rotating electrons in quantum dots: Classical limit

We solve the problem of a few electrons in a two-dimensional harmonic confinement using a quantum mechanical exact diagonalization technique, on the one hand, and classical mechanics, on the other. The quantitative agreement between the results of these two calculations suggests that, at low filling factors, all the low energy excitations of a quantum Hall liquid are classical vibrations of localized electrons. The Coriolis force plays a dominant role in determining the classical vibration frequencies.