arXiv subjects

Songyang Pu

Publications and source records attributed to Songyang Pu.

24 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2020

Bloch Ferromagnetism of Composite Fermions

In 1929 Felix Bloch suggested that the paramagnetic Fermi sea of electrons should make a spontaneous transition to a fully-magnetized state at very low densities, because the exchange energy gained by aligning the spins exceeds the enhancement in the kinetic energy. We report here the observation of an abrupt, interaction-driven transition to full magnetization, highly reminiscent of Bloch ferromagnetism that has eluded experiments for the last ninety years. Our platform is the exotic two-dimensional Fermi sea of composite fermions at half-filling of the lowest Landau level. Via quantitative measurements of the Fermi wavevector, which provides a direct measure of the spin polarization, we observe a sudden transition from a partially-spin-polarized to a fully-spin-polarized ground state as we lower the composite fermions' density. Our detailed theoretical calculations provide a semi-quantitative account of this phenomenon.

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arXiv2020

Interplay between fractional quantum Hall liquid and crystal phases at low filling

The nature of the state at low Landau-level filling factors has been a longstanding puzzle in the field of the fractional quantum Hall effect. While theoretical calculations suggest that a crystal is favored at filling factors $ν\lesssim 1/6$, experiments show, at somewhat elevated temperatures, minima in the longitudinal resistance that are associated with fractional quantum Hall effect at $ν=$ 1/7, 2/11, 2/13, 3/17, 3/19, 1/9, 2/15 and 2/17, which belong to the standard sequences $ν=n/(6n\pm 1)$ and $ν=n/(8n\pm 1)$. To address this paradox, we investigate the nature of some of the low-$ν$ states, specifically $ν=1/7$, $2/13$, and $1/9$, by variational Monte Carlo, density matrix renormalization group, and exact diagonalization methods. We conclude that in the thermodynamic limit, these are likely to be incompressible fractional quantum Hall liquids, albeit with strong short-range crystalline correlations. This suggests a natural explanation for the experimentally observed behavior and a rich phase diagram that admits, in the low-disorder limit, a multitude of crystal-FQHE liquid transitions as the filling factor is reduced.

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arXiv2020

Hall Viscosity of Composite Fermions

Hall viscosity, also known as the Lorentz shear modulus, has been proposed as a topological property of a quantum Hall fluid. Using a recent formulation of the composite fermion theory on the torus, we evaluate the Hall viscosities for a large number of fractional quantum Hall states at filling factors of the form $ν=n/(2pn\pm 1)$, where $n$ and $p$ are integers, from the explicit wave functions for these states. The calculated Hall viscosities $η^A$ agree with the expression $η^A=(\hbar/4) {\cal S}ρ$, where $ρ$ is the density and ${\cal S}=2p\pm n$ is the "shift" in the spherical geometry. We discuss the role of modular invariance of the wave functions, of the center-of-mass momentum, and also of the lowest-Landau-level projection. Finally, we show that the Hall viscosity for $ν={n\over 2pn+1}$ may be derived analytically from the microscopic wave functions, provided that the overall normalization factor satisfies a certain behavior in the thermodynamic limit. This derivation should be applicable to a class of states in the parton construction, which are products of integer quantum Hall states with magnetic fields pointing in the same direction.

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arXiv2018

Berry phase of the composite-fermion Fermi Sea: Effect of Landau-level mixing

We construct explicit lowest-Landau-level wave functions for the composite-fermion Fermi sea and its low energy excitations following a recently developed approach [Pu, Wu and Jain, Phys. Rev. B 96, 195302 (2018)] and demonstrate them to be very accurate representations of the Coulomb eigenstates. We further ask how the Berry phase associated with a closed loop around the Fermi circle, predicted to be $π$ in a Dirac composite fermion theory satisfying particle-hole symmetry [D. T. Son, Phys. Rev. X 5, 031027 (2015)], is affected by Landau level mixing. For this purpose, we consider a simple model wherein we determine the variational ground state as a function of Landau level mixing within the space spanned by two basis functions: the lowest-Landau-level projected and the unprojected composite-fermion Fermi sea wave functions. We evaluate Berry phase for a path around the Fermi circle within this model following a recent prescription, and find that it rotates rapidly as a function of Landau level mixing. We also consider the effect of a particle-hole symmetry breaking three-body interaction on the Berry phase while confining the Hilbert space to the lowest Landau level. Our study deepens the connection between the $π$ Berry phase and the exact particle-hole symmetry in the lowest Landau level.

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arXiv2017

Composite Fermions on a Torus

We achieve an explicit construction of the lowest Landau level (LLL) projected wave functions for composite fermions in the periodic (torus) geometry. To this end, we first demonstrate how the vortex attachment of the composite fermion (CF) theory can be accomplished in the torus geometry to produce the "unprojected" wave functions satisfying the correct (quasi-)periodic boundary conditions. We then consider two methods for projecting these wave functions into the LLL. The direct projection produces valid wave functions but can be implemented only for very small systems. The more powerful and more useful projection method of Jain and Kamilla fails in the torus geometry because it does not preserve the periodic boundary conditions and thus takes us out of the original Hilbert space. We have succeeded in constructing a modified projection method that is consistent with both the periodic boundary conditions and the general structure of the CF theory. This method is valid for a large class of states of composite fermions, called "proper states," which includes the incompressible ground states at electron filling factors $ν=\frac{n}{2pn+ 1}$, their charged and neutral excitations, and also the quasidegenerate ground states at arbitrary filling factors of the form $ν=\frac{ν^*}{2pν^*+ 1}$, where $n$ and $p$ are integers and $ν^*$ is the CF filling factor. Comparison with exact results known for small systems for the ground and excited states at filling factors $ν=1/3$, 2/5 and 3/7 demonstrates our LLL-projected wave functions to be extremely accurate representations of the actual Coulomb eigenstates. Our construction enables the study of large systems of composite fermions on the torus, thereby opening the possibility of investigating numerous interesting questions and phenomena.

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arXiv2017

Positions of the magnetoroton minima in the fractional quantum Hall effect

The multitude of excitations of the fractional quantum Hall state are very accurately understood, microscopically, as excitations of composite fermions across their Landau-like $Λ$ levels. In particular, the dispersion of the composite fermion exciton, which is the lowest energy spin conserving neutral excitation, displays filling-factor-specific minima called "magnetoroton" minima. Simon and Halperin employed the Chern-Simons field theory of composite fermions [Phys. Rev. B {\bf 48}, 17368 (1993)] to predict the magnetoroton minima positions. Recently, Golkar \emph{et al.} [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 117}, 216403 (2016)] have modeled the neutral excitations as deformations of the composite fermion Fermi sea, which results in a prediction for the positions of the magnetoroton minima. Using methods of the microscopic composite fermion theory we calculate the positions of the roton minima for filling factors up to 5/11 along the sequence $s/(2s+1)$ and find them to be in reasonably good agreement with both the Chern-Simons field theory of composite fermions and Golkar \emph{et al.}'s theory. We also find that the positions of the roton minima are insensitive to the microscopic interaction in agreement with Golkar \emph{et al.}'s theory. As a byproduct of our calculations, we obtain the charge and neutral gaps for the fully spin polarized states along the sequence $s/(2s\pm 1)$ in the lowest Landau level and the $n=1$ Landau level of graphene.

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