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Local thermometry of neutral modes on the quantum Hall edge

Nature Physics volume 8, pages 676–681 (2012)Cite this article

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Abstract

Electrons in two dimensions and strong magnetic fields can form an insulating two-dimensional system with conducting one-dimensional channels along the edge. Electron interactions in these edges can lead to independent transport of charge and heat, even in opposite directions. Here, we heat the outer edge of such a quantum Hall system using a quantum point contact. By placing quantum dots upstream and downstream from the heater, we measure both the chemical potential and temperature of that edge to study charge and heat transport, respectively. We find that charge is transported exclusively downstream, but heat can be transported upstream when the edge has additional structure related to fractional quantum Hall (FQH) physics. Surprisingly, this can occur even when the bulk is in an integer quantum Hall state and the edge contains no signatures of FQH charge transport. We also find an unexpected bulk contribution to heat transport at ν = 1.

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Figure 1: Measurement overview.
Figure 2: Local charge transport.
Figure 3: Local edge temperature versus QPC power dissipation at different magnetic fields.
Figure 4: Possible edge structures at different magnetic fields.
Figure 5: Modified device to study heat transport along a sharper edge.
Figure 6: Upstream thermometry to identify FQH structure in the ν = 1 edge.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge financial support from Microsoft Corporation Project Q, the NSF GRFP and the DOE SCGF Program.

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Author notes

  1. Vivek Venkatachalam and Sean Hart: These authors contributed equally to this work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA

    Vivek Venkatachalam, Sean Hart & Amir Yacoby

  2. Department of Electrical Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA

    Loren Pfeiffer & Ken West

Authors
  1. Vivek Venkatachalam
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  2. Sean Hart
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  3. Loren Pfeiffer
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  4. Ken West
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  5. Amir Yacoby
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Contributions

V.V. and S.H. conceived and designed the experiments, prepared samples, carried out the experiments and data analysis and wrote the paper. A.Y. conceived and designed the experiments, carried out data analysis and wrote the paper. L.N.P. and K.W.W. carried out the molecular beam epitaxy growth.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Amir Yacoby.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Venkatachalam, V., Hart, S., Pfeiffer, L. et al. Local thermometry of neutral modes on the quantum Hall edge. Nature Phys 8, 676–681 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys2384

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