Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Interlayer fractional quantum Hall effect in a coupled graphene double layer

Nature Physics volume 15, pages 893–897 (2019)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

When a strong magnetic field is applied to a two-dimensional electron system, interactions between the electrons can cause fractional quantum Hall (FQH) effects1,2. Bringing two two-dimensional conductors close to each other, a new set of correlated states can emerge due to interactions between electrons in the same and opposite layers3,4,5,6. Here we report interlayer-correlated FQH states in a device consisting of two parallel graphene layers separated by a thin insulator. Current flow in one layer generates different quantized Hall signals in the two layers. This result is interpreted using composite fermion (CF) theory7 with different intralayer and interlayer Chern–Simons gauge-field couplings. We observe FQH states corresponding to integer values of CF Landau level (LL) filling in both layers, as well as ‘semiquantized’ states, where a full CF LL couples to a continuously varying partially filled CF LL. We also find a quantized state between two coupled half-filled CF LLs and attribute it to an interlayer CF exciton condensate.

Your institute does not have access to this article

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

$32.00

Buy

All prices are NET prices.

Fig. 1: Interlayer-correlated states at fractional filling factors in graphene double layer with equal densities.
Fig. 2: Interlayer correlation through quasiparticle pairing.
Fig. 3: Semiquantized fractional Hall states.

Data availability

The data that support the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

References

  1. Tsui, D. C., Stormer, H. L. & Gossard, A. C. Two-dimensional magnetotransport in the extreme quantum limit. Phys. Rev. Lett. 48, 1559–1562 (1982).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Laughlin, R. B. Anomalous quantum Hall effect: an incompressible quantum fluid with fractionally charged excitations. Phys. Rev. Lett. 50, 1395–1398 (1983).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Halperin, B. I. Theory of the quantized Hall conductance. Helv. Phys. Acta 56, 75–104 (1983).

    Google Scholar 

  4. Chakraborty, T. & Pietiläinen, P. Fractional quantum Hall effect at half-filled Landau level in a multiple-layer electron system. Phys. Rev. Lett. 59, 2784–2787 (1987).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Eisenstein, J. Exciton condensation in bilayer quantum Hall systems. Annu. Rev. Condens. Matter Phys. 5, 159–181 (2014).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Jain, J. Composite Fermions (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007).

  7. Jain, J. K. Composite-fermion approach for the fractional quantum Hall effect. Phys. Rev. Lett. 63, 199–202 (1989).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Halperin, B. I. Statistics of quasiparticles and the hierarchy of fractional quantized Hall states. Phys. Rev. Lett. 52, 1583–1586 (1984).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Suen, Y. W., Engel, L. W., Santos, M. B., Shayegan, M. & Tsui, D. C. Observation of a ν = 1/2 fractional quantum Hall state in a double-layer electron system. Phys. Rev. Lett. 68, 1379–1382 (1992).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Eisenstein, J. P., Boebinger, G. S., Pfeiffer, L. N., West, K. W. & He, S. New fractional quantum Hall state in double-layer two-dimensional electron systems. Phys. Rev. Lett. 68, 1383–1386 (1992).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Kellogg, M., Spielman, I. B., Eisenstein, J. P., Pfeiffer, L. N. & West, K. W. Observation of quantized Hall drag in a strongly correlated bilayer electron system. Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 126804 (2002).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Liu, X., Watanabe, K., Taniguchi, T., Halperin, B. I. & Kim, P. Quantum Hall drag of exciton condensate in graphene. Nat. Phys. 13, 746–750 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Li, J. I., Taniguchi, T., Watanabe, K., Hone, J. & Dean, C. R. Excitonic superfluid phase in double bilayer graphene. Nat. Phys. 13, 751–755 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Kellogg, M., Eisenstein, J. Pv, Pfeiffer, L. N. & West, K. W. Vanishing Hall resistance at high magnetic field in a double-layer two-dimensional electron system. Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 036801 (2004).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Tutuc, E., Shayegan, M. & Huse, D. A. Counterflow measurements in strongly correlated GaAs hole bilayers: evidence for electron-hole pairing. Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 036802 (2004).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Spielman, I. B., Eisenstein, J. P., Pfeiffer, L. N. & West, K. W. Resonantly enhanced tunneling in a double layer quantum Hall ferromagnet. Phys. Rev. Lett. 84, 5808–5811 (2000).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Yoshioka, D., MacDonald, A. H. & Girvin, S. M. Fractional quantum Hall effect in two-layered systems. Phys. Rev. B 39, 1932–1935 (1989).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Scarola, V. W. & Jain, J. K. Phase diagram of bilayer composite fermion states. Phys. Rev. B 64, 085313 (2001).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Barkeshli, M. & Wen, X.-G. Non-Abelian two-component fractional quantum Hall states. Phys. Rev. B 82, 233301 (2010).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Geraedts, S., Zaletel, M. P., Papić, Z. & Mong, R. S. K. Competing Abelian and non-Abelian topological orders in ν = 1/3 + 1/3 quantum Hall bilayers. Phys. Rev. B 91, 205139 (2015).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

  21. He, S., Das Sarma, S. & Xie, X. C. Quantized Hall effect and quantum phase transitions in coupled two-layer electron systems. Phys. Rev. B 47, 4394–4412 (1993).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Zibrov, A. A. et al. Tunable interacting composite fermion phases in a half-filled bilayer-graphene Landau level. Nature 549, 360–364 (2017).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Kellogg, M. J. Evidence for Excitonic Superfluidity in a Bilayer Two-Dimensional Electron System. PhD thesis, California Institute of Technology (2005).

  24. Hill, N. P. R. et al. Frictional drag between parallel two-dimensional electron gases in a perpendicular magnetic field. J. Phys. Condens. Matter 8, L557–L562 (1996).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

The major experimental work is supported by DOE (DE-SC0012260). The theoretical analysis was supported by the Science and Technology Center for Integrated Quantum Materials, NSF grant no. DMR-1231319. P.K. acknowledges partial support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation’s EPiQS Initiative through grant GBMF4543. K.W. and T.T. acknowledge support from the Elemental Strategy Initiative conducted by MEXT, Japan, and CREST(JPMJCR15F3), JST. A portion of this work was performed at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, which is supported by the National Science Foundation Cooperative Agreement no. DMR-1157490* and the State of Florida. Nanofabrication was performed at the Center for Nanoscale Systems at Harvard, supported in part by NSF NNIN award ECS-00335765. In preparation of this manuscript, we are aware of related work done by J. I. A. Li et al. We thank B. Rosenow, J. I. A. Li and C. Dean for helpful discussions.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Xiaomeng Liu, Zeyu Hao, Bertrand I. Halperin & Philip Kim

  2. National Institute for Material Science, Tsukuba, Japan

    Kenji Watanabe & Takashi Taniguchi

Authors
  1. Xiaomeng Liu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Zeyu Hao
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Kenji Watanabe
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Takashi Taniguchi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Bertrand I. Halperin
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Philip Kim
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

X.L. and P.K. conceived the experiment. X.L. and Z.H. fabricated the samples and performed the measurements. X.L. analysed the data. B.H. conducted the theoretical analysis. X.L., B.I.H. and P.K. wrote the paper. K.W. and T.T. supplied hBN crystals.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Philip Kim.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Peer review information: Nature Physics thanks Timo Hyart, Emanuel Tutuc and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Additional theoretical details, Supplementary Figs. 1–4 and Supplementary references 1–12.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Liu, X., Hao, Z., Watanabe, K. et al. Interlayer fractional quantum Hall effect in a coupled graphene double layer. Nat. Phys. 15, 893–897 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-019-0546-0

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-019-0546-0

Further reading

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing