Haoxin Zhou — Page 2

arXiv2018

Quantitative transport measurements of fractional quantum Hall energy gaps in edgeless graphene devices

Owing to their wide tunability, spin- and valley internal degrees of freedom, and low disorder, graphene heterostructures are emerging as a promising experimental platform for fractional quantum Hall (FQH) studies. Surprisingly, however, transport measurements reveal many fewer FQH states than bulk capacitive probes. Here, we report the fabrication of dual graphite-gated monolayer graphene devices in an edgeless Corbino-type geometry that showing deep FQH sequences. Thermal activation gaps reveal a tunable crossover between single- and multi-component FQH states in the zero energy Landau level, while the first Landau level is found to host an unexpected valley-ordered state at $ν=-4$.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2017

Observation of fractional Chern insulators in a van der Waals heterostructure

Topologically ordered phases are characterized by long-range quantum entanglement and fractional statistics rather than by symmetry breaking. First observed in a fractionally filled continuum Landau level, topological order has since been proposed to arise more generally at fractional filling of topologically non-trivial "Chern" bands. Here, we report the observation of gapped states at fractional filling of Harper-Hofstadter bands arising from the interplay of a magnetic field and a superlattice potential in a bilayer graphene/hexagonal boron nitride heterostructure. We observe new phases at fractional filling of bands with Chern indices $\mathcal{C} = -1, \pm 2,$ and $\pm 3$. Some of these, in $\mathcal{C}=-1$ and $\mathcal{C}=2$ bands, are characterized by fractional Hall conductance---they are `fractional Chern insulators' and constitute a new example of topological order beyond Landau levels.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2017

Robust fractional quantum Hall states and continuous quantum phase transitions in a half-filled bilayer graphene Landau level

Nonabelian anyons offer the prospect of storing quantum information in a topological qubit protected from decoherence, with the degree of protection determined by the energy gap separating the topological vacuum from its low lying excitations. Originally proposed to occur in quantum wells in high magnetic fields, experimental systems thought to harbor nonabelian anyons range from p-wave superfluids to superconducting systems with strong spin orbit coupling. However, all of these systems are characterized by small energy gaps, and despite several decades of experimental work, definitive evidence for nonabelian anyons remains elusive. Here, we report the observation of arobust, incompressible even-denominator fractional quantum Hall phase in a new generation of dual-gated, hexagonal boron nitride encapsulated bilayer graphene samples. Numerical simulations suggest that this state is in the Pfaffian phase and hosts nonabelian anyons, and the measured energy gaps are several times larger than those observed in other systems. Moreover, the unique electronic structure of bilayer graphene endows the electron system with two new control parameters. Magnetic field continuously tunes the effective electron interactions, changing the even-denominator gap non-monotonically and consistent with predictions that a transition between the Pfaffian phase and the composite Fermi liquid (CFL) occurs just beyond the experimentally explored magnetic field range. Electric field, meanwhile, tunes crossings between levels from different valleys. By directly measuring the valley polarization, we observe a continuous transition from an incompressible to a compressible phase at half-filling mediated by an unexpected incompressible, yet polarizable, intermediate phase. Valley conservation implies this phase is an electrical insulator with gapless neutral excitations.

cond-mat.str-el↗