Displacement field stabilizes even-denominator and partonic fractional quantum Hall states in the $\mathcal{N}{=}2$ Landau levels of Bernal-stacked bilayer graphene

Abstract

Bernal-stacked bilayer graphene (BLG), in which a graphene layer is stacked atop another and laterally shifted by a lattice constant, offers remarkable tunability in its single-particle states under applied magnetic and displacement fields. Owing to this tunability, recent transport and scanning tunneling microscopy experiments in the presence of a perpendicular magnetic field and finite interlayer displacement fields have observed even-denominator fractional quantum Hall (FQH) states at half-filling in the first excited, namely, $\mathcal{N}{=}2$, Landau level (LL) of BLG. In contrast, at zero displacement field, a gapless composite fermion Fermi liquid (CFFL) is realized at half-filling of the $\mathcal{N}{=}2$ LL. Motivated by these experiments, we compute the phase diagram as a function of the displacement field in the half-filled $\mathcal{N}{=}2$ LL of BLG by studying the competition between the CFFL and the Moore-Read state---a candidate even-denominator FQH state---by calculating their thermodynamic energies in this setting. We find that the modified effective Coulomb interaction, induced by changes in the single-particle states with increasing displacement field, softens the inter-electronic repulsion at short distances, thereby stabilizing the Moore-Read state over the CFFL in the $\mathcal{N}{=}2$ LL of BLG. We also study the nature of FQH states at fillings $2/5$, $3/7$, $4/9$, and $6/13$ in the $\mathcal{N}{=}2$ LL of BLG. Our results suggest that, with increasing displacement field, the Jain composite-fermion states at $3/7$, $4/9$, and $6/13$ transition into states with distinct topological order that are well-captured by parton wave functions.