Investigations of the exciton condensate

Recent experiments on quantum Hall bilayers in the vicinity of total filling factor 1 (ν_T=1) have revealed many exciting observations characteristic of a superfluidic exciton condensate. We report on our experimental work involving the ν_T=1 exciton condensate in independently contacted bilayer two-dimensional electron systems. We observe previously reported phenomena as a zero-bias resonant tunneling peak, a quantized Hall drag resistivity, and in counter-flow configuration, the near vanishing of both ρ_xx and ρ_xy resistivity components. At balanced electron densities in the layers, we find for both drag and counter-flow current configurations, thermally activated transport with a monotonic increase of the activation energy for d/ℓ_B<1.65 with activation energies up to 0.4 K. In the imbalanced system the activation energies show a striking asymmetry around the balance point, implying that the gap to charge excitations is considerably different in the separate layers that form the bilayer condensate. This indicates that the measured activation energy is neither the binding energy of the excitons, nor their condensation energy.